Volume 1 Episode 9 - Black Sails at Midnight
by Aintzane
Summary: The fleet of the Pirate King is terrorizing the border sectors of the Segmentum Obscurus. Unable to get out of a row of mishaps, Volentia is ready to embark for the nearly conquered systems to bring one of her nemeses to justice. She isn't aware of the moments of real weakness she and her crew are going to face.
1. Prologue

Prologue

The Navy corvette had entered the warp two days ago, so the Hospitaller Sisters of the Order of the Healing Spring were to arrive to the sub-sector cardinal world in a week. That was the first time Sister Palatine Gallina had been trusted to accompany a group of Novice Sororitas to the great temple of Saint Ophrysia where they should take their holy vows before the gathered faithful at the annual festival. The warp route from their small shrine world to the Ophrysia system was among the relatively safe but they had nevertheless departed a few days in advance to prepare well for the solemn ceremony.

An hour before standard dawn Sister Gallina woke up at a jolt, as if the vessel had just returned to the realspace. The next shock bumped her out of her bed. She reached for the switch but it didn't work. Struck with sudden vertigo and sickness, she pulled over the habit and opened the door to the corridor.

There was no single light in the whole compartment, and auspex screens on the walls had died out. Vox channels were silent, even the inner network had been turned off. Gallina found the flashlight and the emergency vox, hardly able to struggle with creeping fear. She had served in the Order for more than a decade, and her stubborn faith in the Emperor's protection had helped her to live through an epidemy that took the lives of many Sisters treating the sick, to hold on for two years in frozen trenches during the lengthy siege of a nearby hive world. But, by His mercy, she hadn't yet encountered foul sorcery all loyal to Him had to combat. Veteran guardsmen had whispered and shouted about witches and even worse things, recovering after surgery or in fever. It often began with an unnatural nauseating still, they said.

She stepped out to warn the others but stumbled upon one of the novices at the exit.

'Are we under attack, Sister Palatine? The girls are all awake, praying for His assistance.'

'Don the armour and get ready. We'll wait for a quarter of an hour and then get out for a reconnaissance.'

They had passed through military training but they were all physicians, not warriors. Not the baptism of fire novices should come upon. Gallina's first thought was to comfort them as she was an only one who they relied on. Hard to admit for a staunch adepta of the Faith, but she didn't feel strong enough to withstand the invisible threat.

Their armaments were scant in a peaceful mission when they depended on the Navy's armed force. Clad in a ceremonial carapace, Sister Gallina checked her stub revolver and gathered her novices at the exit of the compartment. The vessel wasn't silent anymore. Cries and gunshots in the distance. Waves of nauseating white noise that didn't let them concentrate properly.

First cultists broke in with crazed yells in minutes. The door locks didn't work but the Sisters had managed to build a quick makeshift barricade of furniture in the corridor. Two reloads for a whole throng. Half-naked, swinging clubs and iron rods, they rushed to the firing point, their cloudy eyes fixed on the flashlight beams. Hatred for heresy should be stronger than fear, Sister Gallina had told the novices before they boarded the ship. Their hands were trembling when they fired their first shots but Gallina started chanting a hymn to the Emperor, and the novices echoed, their unrest giving way to sacred zeal.

As more cultists fell under the fire, uglier shapes emerged from the dark, few but taller and stronger, their purplish skin and elongated heads looking disturbingly alien. Distant offspring of devourer fleets mentioned in the most horrifying tales. Gallina threw the empty revolver to the floor and tore a grenade off her belt with a sign to the novices.

An echo of the blast shook the compartment. Pieces of furniture fell on the crouching Sisters, a few severed limbs and a head bumped into the wall leaving stains of dark blood. The Sisters waited for a few minutes but nothing happened. They crawled out of their hiding and paced to the exit stepping by the ravaged remains of the intruders. Despite her hesitations, Gallina allowed the novices to pick up weapons dropped by the cultists as their own were of no use anymore. It had got cold, and the corridor walls were covered with a thick layer of hoarfrost. Sorcerous chill, Gallina remembered the tales. Not for the novices' ears.

Irreal faint light was coming from one of the passages outside the compartment, and the Sisters headed there wondering why that part of the ship was empty. Not even a single corpse. Sister Gallina turned the corner and froze up. The opposite wall had gone, a glowing aperture gaping instead. Three giant figures in bulky black armour stepped out towards them.

A hard punch of a ceramite gauntlet threw her to the floor before she could parry with her trophy rod. Traitor legionnaires out of nightmares, their suits overgrown with repulsive horns and tusks and marked with abominable symbols of the Ruinous Powers. The attacker turned his head to the other two.

'Got the Palatine. Croak the rest and let's go back.'

'They're young and saucy,' another traitor said with an obscene gesture.

'Soon we'll have a whole convent to have fun. Dump them quicker, don't even need bolts for these waifs.'

The novices huddled at the opposite wall, unable to move in panic. The traitors unsheathed their combat knives, and Gallina couldn't help crying out when the girls fell one by one, their throats slit, heads smashed. Her captor grabbed her by the neck and punched her again, and she passed out.

She opened her eyes in a small chamber under dazzling white lamplight. It smelled of medicaments, tobacco and alcohol. Her armour had gone, and her hands and legs were in restraints on a metal surgical table. Another giant with a scary augmetic arm was smoking in the corner, scratching his stubbly cheek. When he noticed she was awake, he threw the cigarette butt to the floor and bowed his head.

'Delighted to meet a colleague.' He pointed at his white pauldron where the Prime Helix was still visible under a crudely painted Star of Chaos. 'Wait a bit more, the old drunkard will be here soon, and we'll begin.'

He pulled closer a small trolley with a display of blades and other gruesome tools, took a vial of spirit and gulped the liquid with a content half-smile. The door swung open, and a monstrous warrior appeared on the threshold, accompanied by a traitor enginseer with a servo-scribe drone. His black armour adorned with both Chaos sigils and terrifying bestial silhouettes, the warlord was a head taller than the traitor apothecary. He took off his helmet shaped like a snarling panther head and leaned over Gallina.

'You're welcome to the Macan Kumbang, holy fowl of the corpse-god. If you don't pretend to be a tough nut, you'll be granted a quick death or even stay alive if someone wants you for himself. I need every bit of knowledge about your shitty piece of frozen rock.'

'Murderous, despicable traitor. The Emperor's wrath will fall upon your head.' Gallina clenched her jaws under the stare of his wild eyes.

'Aye, He'll jump up from His golden loo seat to rescue you personally. I swear I'll repent my sins if I see Him come in.'

Gallina flinched when the warlord pinched her thigh. He turned to the apothecary.

'Get to work, you slacker.'

When the traitors left her in the deep snow of her homeworld, she couldn't remember for how long she had been aboard the Black Legion barge. Her broken limbs didn't obey, and blood running from her wounds started freezing in minutes. She looked up at the outline of her convent barely visible through the blizzard. Tears burned her eyes when she whispered the first words of the Prayer of Relief. Her smashed lips got numb but she made it to the last phrase. 'If only I remain constant to Him through this time of torment.'

Snow crunched under light steps, and a young woman in a wide-brimmed hat knelt beside her.

'Uncle, Angel, come quicker. She's alive.'


	2. I

News found us halfway back to Uebotia. The case we had to abandon a while ago got another chance to be solved at last. Our tricky nemesis Blackred DM had been spotted again at the very border of the sector in the space of Abilene taken by the advancing fleet of the Pirate King. Travelling between rebelling planets in his own ship, he had earned a prestigious rank among mortal servants of the Black Legion.

My feeling of no safe return hadn't lied. Even though Platydoras had bailed us at Corydoras's request and even bought us tickets for a rogue trader ship. He and Plodia decided to stay with Cichlasoma to record the bloodcurdling pieces of evidence told by Lucia. I had never expected saying goodbye to the warpseer would be that sad. My former enemy whom I had wanted to kill since the first day we had met was now eager to defend me against all accusations.

In a mere year I had slipped from the dignified status of a promising operative to a low-grade Radical. A younger copy of my mentor, but without his reputation of an inventive researcher of mysteries. If I screwed another case, it could become the end of my career. I doubted they would have me executed but they would surely cut my wages so I would have to find a clerk job in one of Inquisitorial citadels or enlist to another Inquisitor's crew.

We disembarked on a void station at the crossroads of a few warp routes frequented by rogue traders. Unfortunately, I didn't dare to call up Lady Melitara after Myristica, and all members of the Corydoras family were far away. We had to rely on luck alone to find a daring caper who agreed to carry us to the war-ridden sub-sector.

The local bar was unusually deserted. A few grumpy traders and Navy captains occupied the back corner, their faces peaked will fatigue, their garbs shabby and dirty. The bartender turned back from the dusty stall of bottles when he saw us.

'New faces at last. This damn war is a hole in the pocket. Runaways hardly have a bloody penny to their name.'

'A shot of amasec for me and Uncle.' I pulled off the glove to hold the bank chip over the terminal.

'Where are you fleeing from? You look worn but not as battered as the refugees.' He slammed both glasses on the stand and wiped his wrinkled forehead.

'Actually, the other way around.'

'You're batshit crazy.' He stopped when I unzipped the collar and showed him the rosette. 'Even the last Munitorum cargo vessel left a fortnight ago.'

'I'm ready to pay the double price.'

'Life is more expensive, ma'am. The traitors are holding most of routes in the Abilene sub-sector, and there're grisly rumours of knife-eared raiders attacking every small ship in the vicinity.'

I kept on going to the dimly lit hall every evening, but there were even fewer visitors. The bartender wasn't eager to talk anymore, walking to and fro behind the stand and rearranging glasses on the stall. Most of the lamps were turned off to save up energy, the bar kitchen didn't work.

A Navy ambulance ship packed with wounded guardsmen arrived in five days, bringing more sour accounts of the unfurling Black Crusade. The second world of the sub-sector had fallen to the enemy fire, and less than a thousand soldiers survived of ten regiments defending the planet. Furious warp storms summoned by Chaos sorcerers had severed a third part of the sub-sector from all supply lines, not even astropaths able to send reports to the capital.

'We'll leave with the next vessel,' said Uncle when I came back to our room in the outpost hotel. 'If they want the heretic to be caught, why don't they send a rich guy with a personal fleet there?'

'A single swindler isn't worth wasting an army,' grunted Fluffster. 'There's a point in keeping a minor operative in the proximity of the Panther's fleet.'

'Hope he won't find out we're nearby,' I said. 'I bet he's still cross with me after Iarmailt, to put it mildly.'

Next morning the administration placed an announcement in the hall that they were short of food, the remaining stock enough for about a week even if no new residents arrived. My acolytes save Fluffster started pressuring me to book a compartment in the ship of the only rogue trader still stationed at the outpost.

The most unexpected newcomer appeared three days later. A skin-tight neon fuchsia dress almost popping on her plump shapes, black circles under the eyes covered with a thick layer of crumbling makeup, Captain Dolbona Svoa marched into the bar and waved at the bartender from the middle of the hall.

'Glad to see you, old chap!' I startled at the sound of her booming voice. 'It's a shame to see you that grumpy. Pluck up your courage, the Lord Militant has just sent a whole fleet from Uebotia to kick the bastard's ass.'

She noticed me when she walked close to the bar stand.

'What a meeting, Miss Volentia! Plodia has written me about your latest joint mishaps. What an end for a home party. Hope that hasn't discouraged you from further ventures.'

'I admire your breakneck bravery, Captain Svoa. Alone against the whole traitor armada.'

'Food and weed won't transport themselves, and my hubby gets especially moody when out of fine stuff.'

'I heard his regiment was fighting a cult incursion in the Abilene agri-cluster.'

'They've been dispatched to defend Inocybe after the ours had got a thrashing. The heretics have caught a few Munitorum vessels so if I don't break through, they'll frigging starve.'

'That's where they've seen the criminal we're after.' I smiled at the return of hope. 'Wanna ask whether you don't mind a few rogues added to your forces.'

'You're growing into a badass, miss. To be honest, your Blood Angel is the best argument for. By the way, a company of his fanged buddies is going to Inocybe for a merry rampage. I thought of posing as a corsair vessel to get through the blockade but following a barge is even better. The Panther won't risk his ships.'

'Aren't you afraid Miss Inquisitor will burn you for heresy and expropriate your ship, Dolbona?' The bartender put a cocktail glass before Svoa.

'She knows it's better to be friends, especially when alone in deep space.' She chugged the drink and snorted a pinch of dust from a little snuffbox on her wrist. 'Your famous cocktail used to be stronger last time.'

'I couldn't find another bottle of spicy red absinthe. The factory world was exterminated a few months ago.'

'Bastards. Well, Miss Volentia, I'm not gonna wallow here for long, so I expect you to pack your stuff till the evening. We have to hurry up not to miss the red fellows.'

My team listened to the news with even less enthusiasm. They still remembered Melitara's opinion on Captain Svoa, and Uncle was most worried to get under attack or to prison if Svoa was caught at another pesky deal. The black sheep in the Interpunctella cartel, she nevertheless deserved respect for her loyalty to her husband and his cause as well as her friends. We had supported Plodia in captivity on Medrengard (I was grateful she hadn't told Svoa that my initiative had been the cause), so we could rely upon her gratitude.

I parked the owl on the lower deck of her ship and headed to the bridge. The gaudily opulent interiors with bright carpets, pompous paintings and lots of fake gold made it look like a real pirate vessel, obviously the main source of Plodia's earlier inspiration. An enormous mural of Dolbona Svoa herself in her full panoply was painted all over one of the bridge panels, the shipmistress depicted with piles of battle trophies and bejewelled armaments that would make even primarchs jealous.

Svoa was towering over the bridge, clamouring orders into the inset mic on a supporting column. Though similar in stature and style to Plodia, she looked way more fitting for pretentious garbs like golden tight-fitting armour she had donned instead of the showy dress. On seeing us she shouted another strong cuss and ran down the platform stairs with a lit pipe in her mouth.

'Strong as hell, the best weed in ages.' She puffed a ringlet of smoke and wiped a lipstick stain off the pipe mouthpiece. 'Wanna some, miss?'

'The Emperor doesn't approve of psychoactive substances that divert the mind.' Sister pulled my sleeve.

'Have I offered you any, girl?' Svoa didn't even look at her. 'Just in case, Miss Volentia. It'll get rough when we get to Inocybe. We're all old birds here but the yours will shit their pants without a fine reefer.'

'I bet there's a great story behind this cargo, Captain.'

'Greater than you can imagine. Upert's favourite strain, grows on a single bloody world that was taken by the traitors a month ago.' Svoa stopped before the oculus to admire her reflection in the glass. 'I had to refresh a few older connections, give backhanders here and there to pass as a neutral ship. But the old bat Melitara checked up my logs and ratted me out. Right after getting out of hospital. I didn't mind pops Interpunctella but that was enough to attract unnecessary attention from your office.'

'Plodia told me about a matter she had had to solve.'

'It cost me even more so that the report got to her mailbox. Connections are key. Your squeaky-clean kiddos may screw their sweet faces but those who play by the rules are doomed to stay eternal whipping boys.'

'That's why I'm getting more and more like the bastard who tutored me.'

'When the skirmish on Cadia is in full swing, you'll need buddies on the other side as well.'

It got rough in five days when we were to get out of the warp. In the middle of everyday fencing practice the floor shook like at an earthquake shock, lights started flickering. I fell to one knee and cussed but didn't drop the training sword. Sirens gave a long wail but got silent in seconds. Visible to psyker-sight only, thin glowing smoke was condensing in shaded corners. I tossed my sword to Uncle and pointed at the entrance to our compartment.

'Keep Angel and Sister in, say a few prayers for the safe arrival. I'll take Fluffster to the bridge.'

Fierce warp waves were hurling the ship up and down like an empty can, walls and decks rattling as if about to fall apart. Another gust of aether wind slammed me into a door but Fluffster grabbed me by the collar before I could fall downstairs. Elevators jammed, shuttles parked in the docks, it took us twenty minutes just to reach the catwalk.

'That's whom we need here!' Svoa waved her hand from her command throne, a grin of drugged confidence on her face. 'A piece of plating hit my chief enginseer on the head, so our dear Magos is welcome at the control panel.'

Fluffster hobbled to the cogitators, and I had to grip his fur to stay on my feet at the next jolt. Warp stench was growing stronger, a thin layer of frost sparkling all over the oculus.

'What the heck is with your Gellar field, Captain?' I tried to shout over the auspex beeps and metal clanging.

'As always, the generators are bitta wobbly. Come on, don't fret, you've been to a bloody daemon world. Take a pinch of magic dust to feel fine till the very landing.'

A violent shudder of the vessel threw her out of her seat. Her snuffbox opened at the impact, and drug dust scattered over the command platform. She got to her feet with a rowdy laugh and snorted the remains.

'Are you asleep there, Three Eyes?' She punched the mic to turn it on again.

'Just don't yell like that, Cap,' a languid voice answered. 'The storm has carried us away from the route, doing my best to jump out at least in the system. Don't call the astropaths, they're all puking in the corridors.'

The final jolt made everyone on the deck tumble over. Svoa's shiny cloak got stuck in the throne machinery, so she ripped it in half with a juicy f-bomb.

'Frigging look here.' She pointed at the auspex screen where the system map had appeared. 'A nice place to enter space.'

One by one circles of ships lit with different colours in orbit of the planets, warnings popped up in the bottom corners. Inocybe, the last world marked as Imperial, was three planets away while we were drifting towards a small world on the edge surrounded by a swarm of ships, Chaotic and neutral. With chills down my spine I saw the Macan Kumbang over Inocybe but most of the Panther's fleet was concentrated around the backwater planet nearby. The only reason why the Imperial forces on the system capital hadn't been evaporated yet.

Most of the vessels were small pirate ships the same size as Svoa's, moving between the worlds taken by the traitors. I knew Svoa deliberately avoided any Imperial heraldry for safer navigation in contested areas but the Panther's sworn corsairs were as likely to rob their own peers as engage enemies. She was tracing a route to avoid the largest flotillas when a warden ship noticed the newcomer.

'Password and purpose, by the name of the King!' A hoarse voice bellowed from the dynamics.

'We're free traders trying our luck here.' Svoa stood upright before the auspex screen.

'His Majesty has forbidden to get close to Pholiotina, you dumb wench. Switch off the engines until I send a shuttle to search your bucket. Who knows, there may be a whole Guard regiment up your frigging skirt.' There came a burst of rude laughter of many voices. 'One more thing - check up your crew lists and give us no less than fifty men to pay the soul tithe to Lord Warpsmith.'

'Sick of your blabbering.' Svoa turned down the volume and made a sign to Fluffster and the enginseers.

The engines roared, shield generator compartments on the ship map flickered green as their power was accelerated to the max. Svoa herself rushed to the void-engine control panel to dodge the first salvos. We ducked right at the attack, heading towards the next planet, and the charge hit another vessel parked in orbit. Not many captains were eager to get to the fray so Svoa changed the course maneuvering between groups of larger corvettes and frigates. A few more warden ships joined the pursuit to round us up before we got too far.

Our gunners fired the cannons at the closest void-hunter but its defence field was too strong to deal any damage. Probably stronger than the ours. After a few more hits half of our shields got to yellow levels, in a minute one of them was already orange.

'Avoid boarding at all costs!' Svoa ordered. 'The Blood Angels are to arrive in about a quarter of an hour. Are you sure they had been there before we got out, Three Eyes?'

'I know their navigator quite well. But I doubt they jump out close to us.'

'Magos, keep up checking the auspexes to give a signal once they appear. As for you, Inquisitor, it's up to you to to defend the passage to the reactor with your acolytes in case the bastards get in.'

There came a flash on the other side of Inocybe, and a Strike Cruiser followed by four escort frigates appeared on the screen. Pirate ships hurried away to hide in the imposing shadow of the Macan Kumbang as a few of them got down to wreckage in minutes. We were halfway to the capital, shields red and orange, the enemies chasing us in a half-circle, our speed not enough to get out of the crossfire.

'Captain Aphael, do you copy?' Svoa tapped on the mic. 'Magos, muffle all other channels, cannot hear anything because of the damn pirates.'

'Who are you?' The voice from the barge broke through the cacophony of words, chuckles and statics.

'Provisions for the 17th Uebotian regiment stationed on Inocybe. I'm Dolbona Svoa of the Interpunctella trade cartel, acting on the request of Colonel Buch.'

Two Gladius frigates separated from the flotilla and moved towards us. Not a single chance for the pursuers. The enemy ships slowed down letting us go away. Emergency signals lit red, half of the bridge lamps had to be switched off to redirect energy to the generators. Svoa started tapping on the panel keyboard.

'Get into the cutter. Buch will prepare the landing strip.'

Our ship was bringing the rear of the flotilla, and the yellow disk of Inocybe was growing in the oculus. A desert world with a single ocean, it had been settled a few centuries ago when an Exploration fleet discovered ample resources on half of the planets in the system. Though disturbed by Aeldari raids from time to time, the system thrived as a hub of commerce until furious warp storms cut it from half of the regular trade partners. Then the Black Legion appeared. Hordes of pirates were attracted by opulent loot as well as daemons were driven in by sorcery and unrest, and soon the bases and cities fell to Chaos uprisings one by one, those who remained loyal slaughtered or sacrificed by cultists.

I took a place in the cutter, at the window to take a look at the base and the vicinity. The planet's torrid atmosphere was clear as glass so even from the stratosphere height I saw large black spots of ravaged cities with hundreds of red fires and clouds of smoke above, wide ribbons of roads crossing the ochre expanses of desert with scarce green squares of artificial oasises. We were heading to a mountain ridge crossing the lower end of the continent next to a smaller hive city on the coast. Where reddish cliffs towered the highest, I noticed landing lights on a plateau enclosed in steep rock walls.

'They're screwed if they had to crawl up there,' I said to my team.

'It's obvious that the world is already lost to the Imperium.' Angel raised his head, distracted from his thoughts. 'The Pirate King has an advantage in brute force, and the cultists shun the rocks only because cities are easier to loot.'

'I don't like the flashmob around Pholiotina. The Macan Kumbang is here mostly to make the ours give up the idea of reconquering the system capital.'

'Have to admit, I have a professional interest in visiting the system,' said Fluffster. 'In much earlier days, very peculiar objects were unearthed on the furthermost planet, right where the asteroid belt is nowadays. You may guess why the asteroids appeared there. The Mechanicus as well as Ordo Xenos and Ordo Malleus dispatched investigation teams to find out whether the other mining planets didn't have surprises inside. There was time to check only the peopled ones because the First Black Crusade set the region on fire.'

'The traitors hope to excavate something more.'

'On an empty, almost airless piece of rock so far from the sun no one bothered to build a colony there. Exactly as its destroyed sister-planet.'

'We may venture there after we settle the score with Blackred DM.'

'Not so quickly. Soon special agents will arrive to the sub-sector to study and defend dangerous objects that are numerous in this region.'

'Aren't you sick of running after capers and pleading for a boarding pass? We have to solve a really special case to get a promotion. Let's pretend to join a pirate crew. The bastards will fight one another just to recruit our Angel.'

'You were ready to sell a piece of Torquetum to buy a ship. I thought you learned the lesson after the latest attempts at Chaotic sorcery.'

The cutter landed. Only then I saw the base buildings and observation points camouflaged between sheer cliffs. Three figures were waiting for us in the end of the strip. I recognized Korlick's signature peak cap in the falling night.

I jumped out of the cutter, and a wave of hot air hit me in the face. The rocks heated by the scorching sun hadn't cooled even hours after the sundown. Fluffster rubbed his foot against the stone and leaned down to touch the warm surface.

'Thanks to this remorseless orb, we haven't run out of energy yet.' Korlick stepped forward and stopped under a lamppost. 'The reactor isn't working well, if you've got my subtle hint, Magos.'

Naturally skinny, he was gaunt as a mummy after a month of mandatory diet. His hands trembling at the dramatism of the moment and prolonged lack of his favourite doping, he hugged his enthusiastic wife who pushed Fluffster aside and threw her arms around Korlick's neck.

'Your energy will make even the local sun envious, dear.' The half-smothered Commissar slipped out of Svoa's embrace and turned to the smirking soldiers. 'Drive the cutter to the docks and get back to your posts.'

We found Colonel Buch in the base headquarters deep in the heart of the rock solid. On the way there Korlick had told me the base had been built by the Inquisition forces but abandoned after the desolation of the area. High Inquisitors of Ordo Malleus should have more information on the hidden storages the regiment couldn't have opened and even found. The headquarters room was connected to two independent cogitator server rooms and was powered by a separate small reactor to support timely coordination with the other parts. Unfortunately, the interactive map of the base didn't work, and the regiment enginseer didn't have enough competence to interfere in the server functioning. Aided by three guardsmen, the enginseer was browsing data reports at the big cogitator table.

Buch himself was sitting next to a vid-link screen in the back of the room with ear plugs in his ears. His once plump cheeks yellowed and saggy, he had aged as if ten years had passed since the siege of Auriglobus. On seeing us, he nodded to his interlocutor and reached for the control panel.

'I'm sorry, sir, the guests have arrived. Could you repeat it once more for Lady Inquisitor and my commissar could hear. A second, I'll put it on speaker.'

'That's Captain Aphael,' Angel whispered into my ear.

Aphael looked like he was Angel's older brother: golden hair, angelic sculpted face of their common sire, but, unlike Angel, Captain Aphael was worn and strained, and I felt uneasy under the tense stare of his red eyes. He bowed his head when I greeted him but then he noticed Angel by my side.

'Sergeant Pterophyllo, we haven't heard from you for a while. The company misses your bravery.'

'I failed at my duty, Captain, but I'll stand under the Chapter banners when the new war begins.'

I gave him a brisk nudge.

'I'm sorry, sir, but may we postpone the brotherhood reunion matters till after we finish the work questions of the agenda?'

'I beg your pardon, my lady. I'm delighted to learn our Veteran Sergeant has excelled at the service to the Ordos. He is one of the most dignified warriors in the ranks of the Blooded.'

'So nice to hear, sir. But what about the military operations on the planet?'

'I've told Colonel Buch the Company is going to purge the Primaris and Secundus hives while the regiment has to ensure the destruction of Hive Tertius on the coast.'

'Are you ready to provide necessary weaponry? I've heard from Commissar Korlick the regiment is mostly out of ammo.'

'That's what Colonel Buch replied. But, thanks to your arrival, the regiment will have access to the Inquisition arsenals in the rocks. Our Chapter fought alongside the Malleus detachments when the Despoiler sent an army to the sub-sector, and we had to use half of the weaponry until reinforcements arrived. But if the stocks are empty or damaged, we're ready to assist you though it might cost the Imperium lives of our and your fighters.'

'I'll dig into the cogitators.' Fluffster headed to one of the server rooms.

'What about loyal civilians, Colonel?' I turned to Buch.

'Only a bunch have survived the frenzy after the heretic barge dropped whole gangs of cultists in every city.' Buch didn't even raise his head from a cup of instant recaff he was stirring wearily. 'And more than half of them died of wounds in our field hospital. Another regiment was responsible for the evacuation of Hive Primus citizens but they got under heavy orbital bombing.'

'After we're done with all that, gather your men on the plateau. We'll send a frigate to pick you up,' said Aphael.

When we finished the war council, I pulled Angel away from the room on the pretext of discussing the investigation. He was too eager to talk to his previous superior and other sergeants about the news of his Chapter, and his obvious nostalgia troubled me. If they call him back, the bonds of blood will matter more than his temporary allegiance. I couldn't let him go. My best fighter who had vanquished many a foe. My brother.

Unusually detached, he sat down in the corner of a mess hall next door to the headquarters, deep in his thoughts and memories, not participating in the planning. Honestly, only Uncle was able to think by now while Sister got drowsy after the warp storm and Fluffster was still away, busy with the cogitators. I sent a request to the regiment astropath to check my mailbox and showed to my team the town where Blackred DM had been spotted three weeks ago. If the agent was to believe, DM was busy carrying orders and data between conquered planets, and he stood behind the most scandalous riots in the capital.

Knowing his sleuth, I was almost sure he was already aware of my arrival but he didn't look like a man who fled the Inquisition. His desire to get another trophy rosette for his collection will lead him towards the showdown, and it's up to me to win the final fight.


	3. II

When the violent sun of Inocybe had risen to the cloudless sky over the red desert, I got out to the plateau, bored by waiting for the results of the search. The astropath was sick and slow, weeks of warp disturbance had worn her mind so that she spent her days lying in a shaded room with a bowl of anxiolytic pills always at ready. She woke up almost at noon, and two or three hours were needed just to get the minimal concentration.

Dry heat made metal doors and rock walls unbearably hot to the touch, the air was still and thick. The guardsmen had gone inside for their usual duties, even the watchmen retreated to an inner auspex cell. A ladder cut in the rock led to the clifftop observation point. I climbed the crude steps, took my binoculars and turned towards the sea. Black smoke was rising over Hive Tertius, great blazes in the spire and the main living blocks visible even at daylight. Boat wreckage floated in the mirror-smooth sea near the charred remains of the port.

I noticed motion on the misty horizon. Five cutters were descending to the destroyed hive from the orbit. Are you there, Blackred DM? In the regiment disposition I was more than ready to counterattack, if only his damn collection didn't let him blow us up with our own arsenal.

My dataslate tinkled in the pouch. Message from Uncle. 'Lassie, the astropath is ready. Don't get lost.' I ran down the bridge to the next cliff to cut the way and crawled into a narrow manhole. The elevator took me right to the astropath's chamber.

She was sitting up against a pile of pillows, and it took her much effort to hold up her head under the weight of transcription machinery. Her bowl was almost empty. Only a scented candle and the screen of my slate cast dim light on a pile of cables and wires at her bedside. I helped her to plug in my slate's cable, and she froze up with a seer crystal in her hand to let the letter be uploaded through her mind.

Once it was over, she flopped to the mattress, the crystal slipped out of her loosened fingers. I put a pillow under her head and turned her face to the side so she didn't choke in her recovery trance. The list of download files lit on the slate screen. Agent 312, a veteran intelligence acolyte working under the guise of a saloon keeper on the crossroads between the main hives. There were numerous Chaotic cults and even more renegade or criminal warbands and lone vagrants after the outbreak of the riot, and dozens of dubious fellows dropped in to his saloon daily. He had accurately recorded everything random visiters blabbered about our nemesis and one day was lucky enough to take a sneaky pict of him.

I opened the attachment. A youthful smirking face half-shaded with the wide brims of an Inquisitor's hat. The one he'd taken from the body of his murdered brother. Rosettes of different shapes and sizes hung from the hat ribbon on thin chains, and among them was a small glowing cube. The last part of the Necron queen's Webway map. There would be irony if she finished him for stealing from her treasuries but she was too far away to count on her interference even with Fluffster's help.

Over the years together I was getting used to Fluffster's antics but I had to keep in mind such frivolous attitude to dubious and forbidden things might bring me to my demise if any of our Puritans learned in detail about our latest ventures. Especially with my late mentor's well-remembered reputation.

Yet Fluffster's arcane Martian skills made him the most useful member of the team. Even Angel's raw combat power could be replaced by several trained soldiers but Ordo operatives below the rank of High Inquisitor seldom got the chance to recruit tech-priests of Fluffster's level. Moreover, he had volunteered to enlist to our crew of misfits and leftovers. Constantly trying to get closer to batshit crazy stuff. Keeping an eye on a petty person who had just been unlucky to get the mark. The same reason why he had agreed to conceal the details of Lucia's rescue and spent a few hours of talks behind closed doors at the Malleus outpost before embarking for Uebotia. He had been eager to arrive here to find out more about the dark secret of Pholiotina. And to get the Necron map. Was that another part of his agreement with the Silent King of the xenos, or a Necron-worshipping conspiracy among the Mechanicus?

Full data on the base were obtained two hours later. Tired and grumpy, Fluffster handed the flash drive to the enginseer and hobbled out to the owl parked in the underground hangars. We couldn't allow staying here till the evacuation, and the owl engines let us leave the surface without help from the strike cruiser.

Colonel Buch gathered his officers in the headquarters as soon as he got the message. He followed the example of his Commissar, a reefer in his mouth, a full snuffbox of drug dust on his table. Korlick was sitting by his side, even a shadow of a smile on his livened face. When the enginseer plugged the flash drive into the inset cogitator of Buch's desk, a small drawer opened on the other side, and a holographic projection of the base appeared in the middle of the room.

The part we occupied was but a small segment in the center of a complicated pattern of passages, storages and defense structures. Unfortunately, the surrounding sectors were all marked as damaged or demolished. A collapsed tunnel under the mountain ridge led to a fortified arsenal of tactical nuclear missiles. Two of the three separate hulls were empty, but the last was in perfect condition, too well hidden to get recovered by the mobsters of Tertius.

'It's a shame we've lost all Navy support. Too far to stay in the safe range on the ground.' Lieutenant Colonel Dolan, the regiment's main expert on vehicles and weaponry, traced a few possible routes to the destination.

'It wouldn't have been safer,' I objected. 'I've noticed five cutters descend from either the Macan Kumbang or another traitor warship at noon. Their own intelligence agents are already aware that you've got an Inquisitor to assist you.'

'To use our reconnaissance squads as free guides to the weapon stocks,' said Buch. 'There're cultist bands lurking at the mountain foot but they may send someone stronger to intercept us.'

'There won't be traitor legionnaires, they don't need the missiles for themselves. And they hardly care about the scum in the city as long as we're busy with Inocybe.'

'Your Magos told me it's Pholiotina they're after, ma'am. But there's still risk to clash with traitor Guard. We battled a renegade regiment to break through to the base, and the remains retreated to Tertius. The cutters have likely brought refreshments. Pray to the Emperor these are not witches. Our freshly recruited Primaris Psyker died on the day the storm hit the capital. His brain exploded from the inside, may he rest in peace.'

'We'll send three squads, and I'll lead the operation,' said Dolan. 'We need the toughest guys for the job. It's hot in all senses even in the outskirts. Sorry to make your wife sad, Upert, but you're crucial for the discipline.'

'I doubt she's able to be sad at all. My inspirational pistol isn't needed here while our Colonel will take care of the last preparations.'

'I'd advise you to stay here till the evacuation, ma'am,' said Buch. 'That's your only chance to leave the surface.'

'We're departing with your team, Colonel.' I pointed at the road that crossed the ridge close to the arsenals. 'Then our ways will part. An old buddy's waiting me in a shabby saloon or in the desert around.'

I didn't only need to finish the job but felt obliged to pull out Agent 312. A faithful servant of the Ordo who didn't deserve to be torn to pieces by local scum or devoured by daemons. The owl had decent camouflage as well as signal dampeners, and the very outlook of the trailer made passers-by think about vagrants or refugees, not military men.

Dolan, Korlick, the enginseer and three veteran squads left the base in the afternoon in two Chimeras, and we followed them in the owl. While Fluffster was fussing over the auspexes, I pulled aside the sunscreen and looked out through a small window. Tall cacti stood like milestones along the road, the only traces of green in the land of burnt red of rocks and bleached skies. A large condor flew up from a half-eaten donkey carcass at the engine noise, and the barren expanse was silent again. At another turn of the road I saw a pile of parched human bones and shreds of cloth and leather. A severed skeletal hand was gripping a rusty cleaver with an emblem of Khorne etched on the blade.

As we were driving closer, piles of corpses fresh and old lay on both sides, clad in makeshift armour, broken weapon pieces and bullet shells scattered around. Many were only remotely human, with multiple lean arms and elongated skulls with massive jaws.

'Condors haven't even tried them,' Angel said.

'They prefer the Dead Donkey tavern.' Uncle wrinkled his nose.

'If I'm not mistaken, a whole hive fleet can join the party anytime.' I recalled the latest rumours about the surge of Genestealer cults across the Imperium.

Fluffster stopped his work for a second. 'Animals are driven to the animal who leads the assault. You've been to Iarmailt.'

The vox channel came alive. 'Got to the place, ma'am!'

Fluffster leaned over the panels, and I felt the owl get off the ground. Down below the soldiers left their Chimeras, the remaining guards drove the vehicles to a wide cleft hidden from the road by a few pieces of rock that had fallen from the clifftops. We were slowly rising to a row of ledges about twenty meters over the ground, watching the soldiers climb up crumbling steps cut in the wall. Fluffster parked the owl on the widest ledge and turned on the camouflaging field.

The guardsmen gathered before the entrance of a cave. I fixed my vox-slate in a holder on my wrist and opened the tunnel map. Clumsy, obscene graffiti of Chaos emblems covered the rock solid around the cleft, psychic stench still lingering around. Sickening reek of human waste and drugs made me hold my breath and pull the scarf over my nose and mouth. Luckily, I couldn't sense any presence inside.

'There're cultist dens,' said Korlick to the soldiers. 'Don't touch anything they've left here.'

One by one we walked along the narrow winding passage. Flashlights cast light on more blasphemous inscriptions and stains of dried blood on the walls. Heaps of dirty rags and drug packages lay in soot-covered wall niches and dead ends. They had abandoned the place more than a month ago, too deranged to discover the hidden arsenal.

The passage ended in a large cave hall, the crossroads of ten tunnels. A large Star of Chaos was painted in blood in the center of the floor, charred skulls of both humans and mutants placed in neat lines along the lines. Gruff, detached guardsmen turned to Dolan and Korlick trying not to look at the dreadful offering.

One of them leaned on the wall, pale, hardly able to stand on shaky legs. Korlick noticed that before I spoke out.

'What's up, Private? Show what's in your fist.'

The soldier opened and closed his mouth soundlessly. His lips curved into a weird grimace. Creeping warp unrest touched my mind. With an unnatural, brisk move the soldier grabbed his rifle and swung it as a club, his other fist clenched as if cramped.

Korlick's reaction was quicker. The soldier's brains splashed over the wall at a bolt pistol hit. Angel and Fluffster broke through the crowd to the sound of the shot. A small piece of glass rolled out of the dead guardsman's fingers. Angel crushed it under his boot before we could look at it.

'That's why I warned you,' grunted Korlick. 'This kind of shit is to be avoided even in times of peace. Screw your damn sweet childhood memories.'

Warp-infused flects were expensive but quite popular drugs in underhives and a cheap way to find new cannon fodder for cults in the slums. Temptation to pick up a free piece finished many novice city guardsmen, so cultists were known to leave them around as a bait.

'Strangers like to backtalk my favourite reefers but I've never been stupid enough to try anything remotely as dangerous,' Korlick whispered passing by me.

No one of the soldiers uttered a word, struck by the sudden madness and death of their comrade. Dolan turned to the opposite wall studying his own map.

'Pull that big stalagmite aside.'

Three soldiers moved the giant rock with effort, and a small terminal appeared above the ground. Design similar to those in Hereticus outposts around Uebotia.

'Sorry to disturb you, ma'am, but I'm afraid we'll need your rosette.'

When I held my rosette over the terminal sensor, red command runes lit on the screen, and the nearby wall shivered. The rock solid parted revealing a massive metal door with the Inquisition emblem. I put the rosette to the sensor again, and the door slid up slowly, white lamps turned on inside showing a long fortified corridor with bunches of cables and control screens on the walls.

'The dumb Chaotic scum drugged themselves right at the entrance.' Uncle kicked a rusted sacrifice knife with a frown of disgust.

In the end of the corridor there was a similar door with an auspex screen and a mini-map of the arsenal, all covered with a thick layer of dust untouched since the Despoiler's first venture. As the system had been engineered and built around the last years of the Heresy, energy supplies and air conditioning still worked with stability unseen in our centuries. Before opening the door to the launch terminals, I took a brief glimpse of the storage condition. Two unlit and empty, but the remaining one lit green on the map, not a single problem in the notification list.

Fluffster was watching over the enginseer fussing with the terminals while Dolan was ordering around the guardsmen who carried missiles by one from the storage and placed them onto the launch rails.

'Nuclear missiles, an ancient and much honoured technology.' Dolan touched one of the rockets, his face shining with enthusiastic pride. 'Humanity invented and used them even before we left Terra for the stars.'

'To cull its own numbers.' Despite Colonel Buch's report about the pathetic state of the cities, the future demolition was a hard decision to make.

'To combat heresy, ma'am!'

'Are you going to give me a lesson on combating heresy, sir?'

'Targets captured. Trajectory calculated.' The Machine Spirit's mechanical voice echoed in the hall. Timers for the launch were set up to four hours ahead, enough time to escape the nuclear range. The remaining missiles were quite few but they were to strike at the vital parts of the hive to cut off energy and supporting systems. Mining worlds were too few and valuable for the Mechanicus to give up so in a couple decades, when war ended in the sub-sector and cultists slaughtered one another, they hoped to send an exploration fleet to clean up and turn the world into a mere resource colony.

Dolan's vox beeped. 'We're under attack, sir! A Basilisk along with four squads of traitor Guard.'

'Hold on till we arrive. We'll head down in a minute.'

'Let us cover your descent from the owl, sir. My crew is perfectly armed for ranged support.'

'May the Emperor reward you well, ma'am.'

'We won't get down afterwards, so I hope to see you all later. Give our regards to Colonel Buch and Lady Svoa.'

I led my team to the owl ahead of the guardsmen. Down at the foot of the cliff the fight was going on. Our gunners fired their lascannons and heavy bolters, one crew aiming at the enemy vehicle, the other trying to suppress heavy lasgun fire. Most of the traitors had taken cover behind boulders, a bunch already dead or gravely injured but horribly mutated fighters of the fourth squad were pummeling on the Chimera armour with giant metal clubs though they were bleeding from numerous wounds. Mixed heraldry of regiments from all over the sector, dreadful stars painted on their cuirasses, helmets and faces.

The leader of the mutants climbed up to the Chimera turret and tugged at his collar. A mighty blast ripped all his fighters to bloody pieces but the turret exploded, and the vehicle was set on fire. The old, decrepit Basilisk was slowed down by earlier damage and multiple hits but its raw power could cripple our remaining transport in no time now.

Joint fire of Angel's bolter and Uncle's heavy lasgun distracted the enemy gunners. The owl shook as first rounds hit the cliff, rubble and splinters came tapping on the roof like heavy rain. Our defence field was relatively weak but Fluffster had secured the generator well in the lower back part of the owl, and the cliff ledge his us from sight.

Fluffster himself was rummaging through his lockers.

'There must be some charge left, hope it won't incinerate us on the spot. I'll try to leave the engine unharmed. Volentia, trace the route right now, we'll embark right after the clash ends.'

He pulled out his most precious photon thruster he saved for important occasions. Many tech-priests avoid using such weapons and prefer giving them to their battle-automata instead, but Fluffster had a philosophical approach to the perspective of getting consumed by alien dark flames. When he took his place at a loophole, I opened the map on the control panel and entered the coordinates, taking brief glimpses of the battle on the small auspex screen.

'The Red Moon saloon, shortest possible route - 315 kilometres. No activity on ground but three cutters in the range of 100 kilometres.' I tapped on the cutters to see the presumed destinations. Two moving towards Tertius, one almost over the saloon. Unlikely to come across on the way. To save up fuel before the long road, I decided to continue the trip by the highway, only getting off ground in case we'd be attacked. With an average speed of desert-crossing trailers, we would arrive there two hours after sunset. I doubted there was any sense in staying there overnight, so I found the landing site of the Blood Angels. Twice as close to the inn as to Buch's base, and better help with finding the notorious heretic DM.

Meanwhile the Basilisk's fire died out as Fluffster's precise hits evaporated its cannons. Our soldiers were finishing the traitors from the lower steps of the stairway. Nothing but a charred, ravaged hull was left from the Chimera blown up by the mutant, its engine had exploded when fire reached it. Messy corpses of traitor guardsmen lay in piles for the condors as the forces of Chaos never bothered about honouring their dead.

In a minute I heard Dolan's voice in the vox. 'Thank you again, ma'am. Less than a half would have survived if you didn't stand by our side.'

'Congratulations for the victory, Lieutenant Colonel! Do you need medications or assistance in repairs?'

'We won't disturb you anymore. Only one of us has been gravely wounded but I had medical supplies provided for each vehicle before setting off. The enginseer is dealing with the captured enemy Basilisk so we could return to the base quickly. As for our dead, their ashes will be buried in the holy soil of Uebotia.'

I made the sign of the Aquila looking at the destroyed vehicle.

'May the Emperor greet them in His realm.'

Fluffster locked his weapon back in the safe and gave me a nudge. As my job had been done, I gave him the seat and sat at a window, waiting for the engine to start. The guardsmen were getting ready for departure but I gazed past the corpse-strewn battleground, past the growing shadows of cacti and stones, at the western horizon over the sea where the smoke of pyres was still tarnishing the afternoon sky.

The engines hummed, and the trailer moved off from the red cliffs rising over the ridge. Yellow stripes of abandoned roads crossed the desert, meandered by small farms and villages built around artificial lakes. I stayed by the window till the sun started setting. When the colours of the swift sunset were already fading, bright blazes flashed on low clouds above the coast, and a distant rumble came over. The uneasy sacrifice that was only the beginning of another long war.


	4. III

Night was falling over the rocky expanse. The owl was rolling smoothly along the empty highway, like wagons of first colonists I'd seen on old picts when I was reading about the history of Inocybe. Uncle took a can of instant recaff and a tube of sweet condensed milk from a wall locker.

'Let's warm up now. We've had a busy day.'

'We've served Him well.' Sister hurried to the table to put the kettle on.

'He should be very sad for all the crap that's happened today, dearie. Two fellows your age burnt to death in a metal coffin. A city that generations of workers had been building with devotion had to be blown up. Just because a bunch of bastards had decided to lick the damn pirate's shitty ass.'

'Some cannot combat vile temptations of Chaos, Uncle.'

'Because they're dumb shitheads. All they get are bullets to their brainless beans.'

'Do you really think only the stupid join their ranks?' Fluffster raised his head from cheese packages with a sigh. 'You serve the Inquisition, you're allowed to know that. Magnus the Red was smarter than anyone you've ever met. Perturabo, the scared dweller of the darkest chasm on Medrengard, had a wonderful talent for architecture and machines and the same love for knowledge as Magnus. Horus, the Arch-Heretic Horus Lupercal, wasn't book-smart but he was the brightest and the ablest to understand and inspire. I even dare to say that the fallen primarchs were in some senses easier people than their loyal brothers.'

'That wasn't enough.'

'An uncomplimentary opinion of the Emperor's work of wonder. I've seen many traitors both petty and big, and all I can say there's no one without flaws. Some want glory and power, the others want only relief from illness or poverty. Take care not to find yourself in their company.'

Angel was sitting in the corner since the takeoff, unusually quiet. His head drooped to his chest when I shook him by the shoulder. Sweat was rolling down his forehead, he muttered a few words but didn't open his eyes. I touched his neck. He was shaking in fever. Condition impossible for his kind who could withstand even foul pestilences of Nurgle. If only that wasn't the return of his horrid curse.

I shook him stronger, and his mumbling turned into a bitter wail. Red tears ran from under his closed eyelids. I clasped my trembling hands, my head and legs got so heavy I couldn't move. Much worse than the Red Thirst. Rare in the ranks of the Blooded but slumbering deep in the minds of all sons of Sanguinius. Angel stirred and reached for his weapons.

'I'm afraid we'll have to hand him over to Chaplain Lemartes.' Fluffster pushed me aside, the volkite gun already in his paws. 'But only if he doesn't rip us to pieces right now.'

'Can you wake him up or at least tie him down till he gets back to himself?'

'There's no return if he stays in the nightmare for too long. All he sees are spectres of long-dead warriors aboard the Vengeful Spirit. Very few survive their first battle in the Death Company. Those who do are often so desperate and deranged that the Grim gives them the Emperor's mercy.'

'Don't shoot, Fluffster. I'm a psyker, let me try first.'

'You cannot imagine...'

I put my fingers in my ears so I couldn't hear his warnings. The less I knew, the fewer reasons to be afraid. Concentration was harder than before, Angel's pain and fear overloading my psychic senses at first touch. Not the time to recall scary accounts from history books and Malleus protocols. Stormy waves of the warp caught me, and I dove into the whirl, my gaze fixed on Angel's soulfire.

Bloody mist of his wrath parted. The flame flickered far in the end of a battleship corridor blocked with dead and dying space marines in black and red armour. Voices of the Neverborn echoed in the high arches overgrown with psychic frost. A splendid place marred by the touch of Chaos and desolation of war.

Angel froze up at a charred column before a thin shifting wall of aether that separated us living from the majestic dead who stood ready for their last fight on the colossal bridge. A hall large enough to dock a trader ship like the Morning Glory. Everything blurred as if to block the visions from the one who shouldn't see that. Dull pain in my heart. I tugged Angel by both arms.

'Angel, come back! You'll get lost if you don't wake up right now!'

Tears choked me. Angel didn't notice me, his pale face turned towards the dreadful battleground. He touched the wall, made a step forward.

'Father. Father, let me... Let me stand by your side. To take the blow for you. Father...'

'Your father is dead! Dead! Long dead!' I cried out and gathered all my psychic strength for a single blow.

Angel startled and turned back. The vision flashed before my eyes with ruthless clarity. Too quick to look aside. The Arch-Traitor's crimson eyes on his face of a dead man. A glower too insane to withstand. Feathers white and red fall down to the floor, scatter around the nightmarish giant. Mangled beautiful wings shiver in agony. Burning torment. Not my own wounds, but why? Why so painful? Don't die, just don't die... I'd rip out my eyes. To unsee that. Don't die...

Broken wings sprawl on the floor as the Great Angel's life fades away. Nothing but darkness. Comforting darkness. Too late.

A distant whisper from beyond the last border I'd crossed.

'Open your eyes, Volentia. Open your eyes.'

Suppressing haze of pain didn't give way. Only after an eternity of vain attempts I came up to the surface of the swamp and gasped for air. Back to the owl. The warm world of the living. Fluffster holds me by the hand. The others sit on the floor around my sleeping place.

'He's dead, Fluffster.' Tears again. I couldn't even wipe them.

'For a hundred centuries, Volentia. People say he is there in the realm of the dead to meet faithful souls when they part with the body. Hope that helps.'

My thoughts tangled and eluded. 'How could that happen? The brightest of all, you said. I saw him. A monstrosity painful even to glimpse at.'

Fluffster leaned his head to my ear.

'They shouldn't hear that but you should. Keep the sight in mind. So you never give in to the taint left by the sacrifice. So you'll be ready if anyone of those you know turns into a monster. The higher one climbs, the worse is the fall.'

'Not sure whether it's right, but I feel shame for both.'

'Horus's fate is much more bitter. He realised what he's done but was unable to break free. He'll never come back.'

'Forgive me.' Angel leaned over me. His face was livid, and one of his eyes had turned red. 'So sorry for you.'

'It hurts, brother. Must be horrible, to live with this suffering. Anyway, don't leave us.'

'Don't tell Captain Aphael... I feel fear. My kind isn't allowed to, I know. But after today, it might return any day. Any hour.'

'I won't snitch on you. That old life in the Chapter, you left it behind years ago. Think about our future ventures together. We won't let them take you from here.'

I sat up clutching my head. Blood pounding in my temples, black spots dancing before my eyes as if I'd been caught up in a powerful blast. The owl wasn't moving. Fresh night air wafted through a half-open window.

'Looks like we're already here. For how long I was out of my mind?'

'Four hours,' said Uncle. 'Angel jumped up to his feet right after you fainted. We all tried to return you. Sister brought her medicines. But you lay quiet and pale, even your heart hardly beat at all. Enough fiddling with the warp, lassie.'

'Well, work is the best respite.' I tried to get up, and Angel extended both hands to help me. 'Time to drop in to the saloon now.'

'We're on the backyard parking, lassie. Lace your boots, and let's go.'

Warm wind hit me in the face, and I took a deep breath. As if it could drive the smell of the primarch's blood out of my lungs. The desert night was alive with thousands of wilderness voices. Crickets chirped in rustling grama, owl calls and coyote howls echoed in the hills. The parking had only a few free places left. Runaways from the hive warned by the Pirate King's agents.

A dusty lantern rocked on the pole at the peeled sign over the door. Loud music and drunken chattering came from the open windows. My hand on the pistol hilt, I walked up the cracked wooden stairs and pushed the batwing doors.

A company of gamblers gathered around a big table at the entrance didn't turn their heads when we battered newcomers came in to the packed saloon misty with thick tobacco smoke. Midnight visitors were all cultist fighters and deserter guardsmen in rags and mismatched armour parts. Many displayed Chaos emblems tattooed or painted on their faces and bare chests. Almost everyone had been injured but only a few had bothered to bind their wounds.

Night moths gathered around the ceiling lamps like a stirring cloud. I touched my top button, and my cyber-moth dove into the smoke and mixed with live insects. There might be other spying drones there but neither me nor Uncle had any signs of Imperial allegiance.

The bartender himself was away from the stand, so we sat at the edge, and Uncle took a few coins out of his pocket. Soon the backdoor opened, but a tall woman with a blood-rusted cleaver on her hip got out instead. When she turned towards us, I saw a snarling panther tattoo where her shirt was torn on the shoulder.

'Just skedaddled from the nukes, pops? Your lass is still white as spit in a cotton field.'

'That's for sure, beauty', replied Uncle. 'Pour us both a drink.'

'No free lunches today, and the rooms are all taken.' She put two shots of cactus brandy on the stand and poured in a dash of blackberry liquor.

'Nevermind, anyway I'm gonna go away to find another employment. Our ringleader took a bolter round to his head yesterday.'

'Don't go to the big hive, the red bastards are rampaging around there.'

'Haven't been here for a while.' Uncle finished his drink and looked around like a boozer overrun with nostalgia. 'Last time, the old bartender was around.'

Uncle could be relied on in guised operations, unlike Angel or Sister.

The woman leered. 'Curious what happened to him?'

'Don't give a shit, to be honest. Just thinking about the past, like all us old dodderers do.'

'You may ask the gamblers, some of them are looking for guns for their warbands. What god do you serve?'

'The one that pays the most,' said Uncle.

'Mean old bastard. Go to Khornates then, they have a liking for simple merry carnage and won't bang your daughter and you right on the spot, unlike Slaaneshites. Just don't tease them lest they take you for a corpse-worshipper.'

'Are there any left here? I've heard the King's men bombed the evacuation column.'

She showed her sharpened teeth. 'Caught one here a few days ago. Ordered a drink like he was one of the ours, but got into a brawl with a gang of deserters. One of them grabbed him by the shirt, and we saw the damn two-headed eagle on his neck. The guys dragged him out to the backyard. We all listened to his screams till it was midnight. It's a shame he was only a lousy PDFer. The King pays well for officers, officials and Inquisition agents.'

I reached for my glass to keep my hands away from the collar. No moves that can look suspicious. Uncle's glass was empty, so the bartender refilled it with a grin. They exchanged a few more small talk phrases.

'Well, beauty.' Uncle got up and put the coins on the stand. 'Time to take off. I heard, one of the King's sworn captains is recruiting for a new crew.'

'Your lass will interest him more than your old bones.'

'We'll see.'

When we got into the owl, Fluffster started the engine and speeded up to the maximum without questions. Only then I told him about the unexpected turn.

'It was wise to avoid asking about him,' said Fluffster.

'My brethren will purge the place.' Angel shook his fist, his wrath still alive inside.

'Blackred DM is closer than we think.' Obnoxious scraps of today's vision kept on going in the way of my investigation despite all efforts. Too little hooch.

An hour before daybreak we reached the current base of the Blood Angels. They had chosen a former training facility of the PDF in the suburbs of Secundus to finish their operations in the hive. The place bore signs of combat but the metal fence had been repaired, and hardly any of local warbands ever dared to come close. Two scout marines met us at the gates and showed us where to park the owl next to the Company's Rhinos.

Smile appeared on Angel's face. Another reminder he'd be back to the Chapter ranks one day. The ones who'd chop off his damn head at another bout of hereditary rage. I pushed him aside and looked out of the owl first.

A creepy winged shape was walking towards the owl. Parking lamps didn't work, so I stood straight and crossed my arms waiting for the weird visitor to enter the circle of light from our back lantern. The stranger's wings were jet black, and his armour had a grisly look of exposed muscles. He carried a power axe he didn't bother to lower even when coming close. Screw you, the Grim.

'Where is he?' he asked instead of a greeting.

I smirked looking him straight in the gaunt face, though my lips were stiff with anxiety.

'Dark wings, dark words. Why don't we just say hello and talk like serious people?'

'He does not belong to you. He has chosen to spend some of his Pilgrimage years assisting you in your battles against the enemies of Mankind. He belongs here, where his blood-brethren are preparing for their last stand.'

'Let's assume you're right. But while he's in my retinue by all documents, I'd prefer you solved the matters through his formal superior. I'll even listen to you now though my official workday has ended ten hours before.'

Wrong tone, wrong arguments. Bad time, first of all. He'd obviously noticed my pale face, trembling hands and the reek of cheap booze.

'What happened to him on the way here?'

'Nothing special. He's drunk a mug of recaff with sweet milk, if you care,' I said.

'Are all in your Conclave clowning like you?'

'Lord Platydoras just sends uninvited visitors away till the next consultation day.'

He kept on staring into my eyes. 'Have there been any other occasions of his bloodthirst curse in your presence?'

'If there were any, I'd have been eaten long ago.'

He gripped his weapon tighter. Under the piercing glare of his red eyes I stepped back and stopped in the doorway. The door opened behind me, and Fluffster's paw tapped on my back.

'Arguing with Lord Chaplain, Volentia?'

'Start the engine, Fluffster. Things will get hot if we don't give Angel out.'

Fluffster just lifted me off ground and put next to himself.

'Your visit is an honour to us, sir.'

'I have arrived alone out of respect for Lady Inquisitor's office.'

'But you didn't ask with respect,' I said. 'You didn't even call me Lady Inquisitor to my face.'

'Brother Pterophyllo, come here.' Fluffster turned back and beckoned. He seldom played along with the team. As always, only his own obscure agenda.

Angel bowed his head before the sinister Chaplain. Astorath studied his red eye for a few moments and shook his head.

'Do you have psykers in your retinue, m'lady?'

'Well, just myself.'

'That is why you are shaking all over. Bravery and devotion do you credit but you should have realised you were on the brink of madness. And there is no guarantee the visions will not ruin you mind after weeks of repeating nightmares.'

'Thank you for caring, sir, but I've got used to nightmares.'

'I have to remind you I am still willing to hear about earlier accidents.'

'Let Lady Volentia have a rest after the harrowing experience,' said Fluffster. 'I have a detailed record, moreover, some nuances are out of the competence of regular operatives.'

'I have heard from Lord Mentor about a few similar incidents.'

Fluffster's company of big dogs still nosing around. They could have chosen better objects of observation, but after all the mess with the cursed ship I'd drawn too much attention to our humble company. Fine as long as they weren't going to burn me.

Two Blood Angels with sergeant insignia appeared from behind the row of Rhinos. Angel waved both hands with genuine joy I didn't expect.

'Long time no see, Pulcher.' The first one smiled back. 'When you're over with the examination, come to the mess.'

'My brothers,' said Angel when he noticed my sour face. 'I feel like I'm home at the Arx Angelicum again.'

'As long as the Tyranids don't decide to have a snack,' I grunted.

'Hope you're going to return soon,' said the second sergeant. 'A few splinter fleets are approaching the Baal system. And we're all gathering to stand against the Despoiler's forces next year.'

Angel nodded. 'This assault is already one of the first shots of the new war.'

'Lord Commander has summoned every Successor Chapter in the Galaxy. Let's go, the Captain has much to tell.'

No one paid attention to me anymore, and I stepped into the shadow of the owl and shambled to the fence. A few engineer serfs were smoking behind a Rhino they were repairing. I waved my hand and bummed a cigarette from them. My first cigarette, but there're always things we do for the first time. I leaned on the fence, far from all noise and talks, and put my hand into my belt pouch looking for a lighter. Disturbing smell of blood was so strong even tobacco smoke couldn't kill it. The blood spilled ten millennia ago but still fresh.

The red disk of moon crawled down to a cleft between the rocks towering over the base. A broad stripe of moonlight crossed the yard, and I noticed a dark spot on the ground in the corner of my vision. I turned my head and dropped the unlit cigarette with a cuss. That was a severed head in a pool of congealing blood.


	5. IV

I reached for my vox bead but stopped. A lean shape stood twenty steps away in the shadow of a storage building. Wide-brimmed hat, green spot of the Necron relic glowing against the crimson cloak. Blackred DM rose his head slowly, his hand on the pistol hilt on his hip. The bunch of rosettes tinkled when he greeted me with a slight nod.

I heard his sneering voice inside my head. 'Cry out to your buddies, and I'll vanish. But now we have a chance to solve our lasting strife, Inquisitor.'

I came closer, ready to draw my weapon. The head separated me from my rival like a grisly mark on a duel ground. The man whom I had seen on a Conclave-issued curriculum pict only. Killed on duty by the heretics.

'You did well in the saloon, Inquisitor. But I have a moth of my own. I got rid of him right after he'd sent the last message.'

'Your collection helped you to sneak here unnoticed, you Chaotic dickhead,' I sent him a similar answer.

'My latest acquisition. A Malleus Inquisitor Lord's brand new rosette. He himself was appointed to his office only because his superior had died in a daemon invasion. He didn't know his subordinates well, that's why I spent some time hanging around. He totally sucked in a one-on-one quick draw duel. I used his genetic material to have it reprogrammed.'

I breathed out running my fingers across my laspistol hilt. Excitement of finishing the case, even at the cost of my life. Let him get carried away by his pompous eloquence. To wait for the perfect moment. I was no master gunslinger but his cocky confidence in an easy win played against him.

'Rosettes like yours are cheap as shit.' He looked up at the moon, dramatic contempt on his effeminate face.

Grabbed, drew. In less than a second. He was still quicker. Sharp pain pierced my shoulder where the bullet hit, and my pistol fell out of my fingers. Vice-like grip on my throat and lungs. Black spots flickering in my sight. My soul set on fire. My own blood dripping on the red sand. I opened my mouth gasping for air soundlessly.

'But the King pays well even for Inquisitors as miserable as you.' He finished his phrase as he walked up to me, grabbed me by the collar and pulled the rosette out of my pocket. 'He presented me with this weapon crafted by his Warpsmith. A single scratch has rendered you utterly helpless. We'll leave this squalid place through one of the back gates and will arrive to the Macan Kumbang at dawn.'

Unable to say a word, I looked at drops of blood trailing behind me while Blackred DM was dragging me up a rocky path away from the base. Burning pain. But not as excruciating as the visions coming back again, amplified by the warp-poison. Red blood on white feathers. Crimson eyes on a livid face. A bumpy bike ride. A battered shuttle. Dirty, stinky corridors of a trader ship. The noisy, colourful mess on the bridge of the Macan Kumbang.

The Panther slouched on his throne against the starry void in the oculus, clad in his menacing armour, the eerie crimson glow of his seer crystals dazzling to the psychic sight. Musk smell had got much stronger, lingering all over the platform. He clapped his hands when DM threw me to the floor before the throne.

'One more in a single month. You'll get a fine stock of ammunition and slaves for your vessel, captain. Go to the feast hall to join other captains in celebration of our new victory on Inocybe.'

The poison was wearing off. I cleared my throat and tried to get up. The Panther roared with laughter.

'It's been a while since Iarmailt, you dumb wench of the False Emperor. But you've been luckier than Pansexualis. If the metal bitch comes to your rescue again, I'll shag her in all her rusty holes.'

'Her cryptek will shove his staff up your ass first, you beast.' I had nothing to lose.

'Prudes like you get wet just thinking about beasts like me. Your buddy Plodia, of course. Well, I banged the hell outta your Ordo Xenos colleague a few damn hours ago.'

'Do I look like Aphedron to talk to me about whoring?'

'Even you're better for that than a buddy of yours I'll have to meet soon. We'll discuss other matters today anyway. Where the heck is the blooddamn Headsman?'

I sat up rubbing my eyes. The Panther's scary apothecary stood over me, chewing a sandwich. His impassive face showed his degree of interest in his overlord's business.

'I bet you'll explode if you go on noshing, slacker!'

'Well, I have to remind today's my day off, sir.'

'Yeah, you wish! Stop smoking in your damn lab and do something at last. Take the wench there, I'll join you in half an hour after I meet the guest.'

The Headsman stuffed the last sandwich piece into his mouth, shook crumbs off his stubbly chin and beckoned.

'You, come here. Better not try to run away, don't ruin my mood even worse.'

I staggered on my numb legs but he extended his augmetic arm. He pushed me in the back, and I hobbled to a long side passage, one of the blades mounted on the arm touching my neck.

When the bridge was lost to sight, the Headsman spoke again.

'Well, let's make a deal, okay? I'm quite tired, I've got other work to do today. You'd better answer the King's questions without pretensions, and I'll feed you and find you a job in the lab afterwards. I treat my lab rats better than many of my peers do.'

'You mean, I have to betray my friends just because you feel like slacking?'

'You're an Inquisitor and can understand that well, I guess. Remember what condition your Repentia was in when you picked her up in the snow. Has anything like that ever happened to you?'

'I'll try my best to hold on.'

'Everyone boasts like this. In reality, nine out of ten shit their pants during the first fifteen minutes.'

'Sister was different.'

'She was worth respect, true. My colleagues are a special sort of people.'

He pushed a narrow off-white door with a faded Prime Helix emblem, and I entered a brightly lit room with metal walls and floor. My bowels shriveled at the sharp stench of medicines and chemicals. Colourful vials stood in long rows on a tall shelf in one of the back corners, the other corner was occupied by an untidy surgical table. The Headsman knocked on the back door.

'I told you to wash the table in the morning. Bring number five from the beta locker, along with the antidote.'

'Aye, in a second, sir.'

An Apothecarion serf dashed in with a small box in one hand and a wet cloth in the other. His white lab robe was motley with stains, and most stains looked like wine or sauce.

'I've been cutting sausage and cheese for your sandwiches, sir.'

'Wipe the table, pull out my case and come back to the food stocks. The others are dead drunk, I guess?'

'Hungover, sir.'

'Well, I won't need them till afternoon. Hey, girl.' He turned to me. 'Enough batting your eyes at me. Put your weapon on the floor, take off your carapace, coat and boots. Our merry King will be boozing with his buddy for no less than a couple hours, so we have time to spend with use for science.'

I frowned and started undoing the clasps slowly on purpose. The serf dragged the table to the center of the room, wiped the surface and brought in a trolley with a large plate of sandwiches and a glass jar.

'Surgical spirit, everything as you like, sir.'

'Fine, get back but warn me when the King is gonna pay us a visit at last.'

While I was dealing with the clasps, the Headsman picked up the case the serf had taken from under the table and started throwing his work implements out to the trolley. Then he kicked the case back to the corner and took a sandwich from the plate.

'Are you retarded, girl? Unexpected from a person of your profession. No one likes procedures, but it won't hurt much now. When you're finished, lie down on the table, I'm almost ready. If you're naughty, I'll catch and hamstring you with no effort.'

Shaking with anxiety and cold in that fridge of a room, I crawled onto the table and sat with my legs stretched out. Tapping my fingers on the wet surface, I watched the Headsman checking data on the screen of his arm and unpacking a tiny vial of purple liquid from the 'box number five'.

'Ready, girl? What a nasty hole the bastard made in your shoulder. But don't panic, it's not even close to mortal. If you keep our little agreement, I'll stitch you up after lunch. Now lie back, relax your muscles and count to ten.'

I flinched when the syringe needle stuck into my neck. The Headsman sat on the edge of the table chewing on the sandwich. Crumbs scattered over me when he reached out to probe my pulse.

'Your cactus booze might worsen your general condition, just in case. In five seconds your heart rate will surge, you'll feel muscle contractions in your chest, abdomen and limbs.'

My heart leapt, I shivered as if rounded up by a Tyranid swarm. As if back to the nightmarish Chaos shrine. My breath stopped, arms and legs spasmed.

'Relax, the poison is much diluted. Take a breath every ten seconds. Your stomach might ache because of the booze. How do you feel now?'

Gritting my teeth, I stared back into his indifferent face. He made a few marks on his screen and got up.

'I'll check you up in half an hour.'

The serf looked into the room again.

'Sorry, sir, I brought the wrong antidote last time. Just found the ampule under the stall.'

'Put it here on an empty shelf along with the poison. I'll take a nap in my cell.'

'By the way, His Majesty has led the guest to his secluded chamber over the Apothecarion.'

'Screw them. Don't disturb me unless they need me.'

The locks clanged. I was left alone in chilling white lamplight. I couldn't move, my muscles so tight that every contraction echoed with pain in my strained joints and ligaments. Disturbing visions came back once the room was silent. Worse even than the ministrations they were going to wright upon me. Mangled wings shivering, a moment before they sprawl forever.

To distract my weary mind, I tried to catch faint sounds of voices heard from the ventilation above. Too far for my ears, but my psychic senses reacted with speed and power I didn't expect. The Panther's booming roar sounded inside my head. The other voice that addressed him made me startle.

'Your ship is packed with vile xenos mutants,' said Imudon. It was easy to guess why he paid a visit to the warlord he'd despised before.

'Don't care a damn. They're eager to take part in every skirmish.'

'So you want to attract a whole swarm towards your fleet, don't you?'

The Panther snickered so loudly it made the ventilation grate shiver. 'I do, you sourface.'

'You're either the dumbest or the most cunning animal in the galaxy.'

'Take your time to taste the drinks I've had served for you. Coconut moonshine, old wine from a rogue trader ship. Add in a dash of mango liquor. There's some famous warp-dust left in the snuffbox, prepared by the Lubricious himself from the distilled essence of non-soulbound psykers.'

'I'd prefer my mind to stay clear.'

'Well, you're still alone, I heard? I've just picked up a steamy ho from Ordo Xenos. A red-haired bitch with a fine ass. Just imagine the Holy Inquisition sucking on the Black Legion's giant cock!'

'Are you a soldier of the Warmaster's host or a worthless wencher like the deranged commanders of the Third? We were supposed to talk about business, not whores.' I imagined the pious grimace on Imudon's face when he spoke this phrase.

'You old boring holier-than-thou, I bet you hadn't touched a living woman even before you got recruited!' the Panther snarled on hearing the title of his much beloved superior.

'I was married.'

'Sweet. So sad that space marines are doomed to see their families die. I bet you still get a stiffy thinking about her boobs even a hundred centuries later.'

'I won't discuss that with you, dumb beast.'

'Soon you'll be banging your own Inquisition crush on the altar of Slaanesh if we agree on a good price. I start to feel sorry for having left my late best buddy in the sands of Iarmailt. He could have talked to me like a grown man to a grown man, unlike you.'

My friends won't have a chance to learn where I'm gone. Imudon will bring me to the shrine, where his even more sinister subordinate is setting his own traps. The First Acolyte had helped me to escape but I still remembered Lucia's lurid stories of his reign in the shrine.

A loud crashing noise interrupted their negotiations. I heard their heavy boots thud on the ceiling over my head, then the Panther yelled:

'You've missed me, wimpy holy fowl of the imperious corpse? Look, Imudon, a whore right for your exquisite taste of a preacher!'

'And a fully clad Blood Angel, while you've left your cutlass and helmet on the bridge.'

'Don't get deceived by his pompous stature. They all have twats under their red armour.'

'Taste this, you accursed heretics!' I hardly recognized Angel's voice in the ferocious battlecry. My friends have found me.

A blast and loud rumble muffled out Panther's cusses. The ventilation grate fell out at a violent blow, and Angel jumped down to the floor next to me, catatonic Sister on his shoulder, her Eviscerator in his hand. Luckily, the Headsman was napping too far away to hear.

'Alive.' He smiled. 'Get up, Fluffster knows where to run.'

I opened my mouth, unable to wheeze a word out of my clenched throat. Sister's eyes were opened wide, her face a frozen mask of terror. Her past had just found her.

'Are you fine, Volentia?' He shook me, his battle rage giving way to his usual anxiety. 'What have they done to you?'

'There. Shelf.' I gathered all psychic strength to speak to his mind. The eavesdropping had left me so worn I could send only a couple of words.

'Poison? Soon Sister will help you, just wait a second.'

Sister stirred, awakened by the sense of duty. She reached out slowly to touch my wrist.

'Shelf. Purple.' I sent her after a brief respite, digging through her tangled thoughts and horrible memories.

'The Headsman. He's tested. Another concoction. Purple, there. Unopened.'

'Don't get too tired, I'll look up myself.' Angel patted her head and ran to the shelves.

In the room above, the two were arguing at the sounds of moving blocks. Rubble fell down through the hole.

'I blew up a few columns that collapsed on their table right when I dashed into the ventilation.' Angel brought the ampule and found a syringe in the pile of tools on the trolley. 'I'll share my stim-pack with you, for your shoulder. Let's go while they're not here.'

'The same room where...' Sister couldn't finish the phrase, her face losing life again.

I stretched out my relaxed muscles and sat up recuperating after the grisly procedure. My clothes lay in a messy heap under the table. I quickly zipped my boots and coat, pulled over the carapace not bothering to fasten all the side clamps. The remaining Necron dagger was here, fastened to the inner side of the front plate with an elastic band. Shaking on still numb legs, I followed Angel out of the Apothecarion. The corridor was empty and quiet. One of hungover serfs looked out of another door but rubbed his eyes and hid back, probably taking us for symptoms of delirium.

'We'll go through the air shaft to the docks,' said Angel. 'Fluffster managed to sneak into DM's ship in the owl, while the heretic is still aboard the barge.'

He hacked at the lock on a small door that separated the corridor from the massive air shafts, the whole system still in a surprisingly decent condition unlike on most traitor warships. I looked down and probed the metal clamps on the shaft walls.

'It's fine anyway, my jump pack has enough fuel to carry you both if they break. We have to climb three levels down, there's a narrow passage to the ventilation system of the lower decks where the lesser ships are docked to the barge. Fluffster has hacked the security systems, the crew has mostly left along with their master.'

'How did you find me?'

'We all heard the shot. I rushed to the fence with my brothers, and we found your pistol and the deceased operative's head. Fluffster used his devices to intercept the shuttle transmissions. The owl slid inside after DM had left his shuttle, the rest was quite predictable.'

I reached the third level platform and let Angel maul the hatch of the passage. Red emergency signals flickered on the wall screen but Angel crushed it with a single punch of his gauntlet.

'Anyway the traitor enginseers are shooting up or drinking. We'll be long away when they notice another broken screen.' He tore out the bunch of cables connecting the screen to wall sensors.

'That's why the forces of Chaos haven't overcome us yet,' I said. 'We might be fewer, scattered over the galaxy but we friggin act as a close-knit army. Not as a band of junkies eager to slit one another's throat and dumping cig butts to the reactor.'

'Their marines are fewer than the ours. Many are so deranged they listen to voices in their heads only. The sane ones are veterans of the Long War, Fluffster said with even respect, but the Imperium can deploy ten warriors for every veteran of Abaddon's army.'

He crawled into the narrow manhole first. I was ready to pull Sister through the passage but she mimicked our moves, not realising what we were doing, with an instinctive desire to crawl away from danger that had suppressed other thoughts. My mind was recovering from concentration fatigue, so I tried to help her. To no avail. Old pain and sorrow struck me, and I hit my head against the wall.

Another screen cast light on the other end of the passage. Angel pointed at the mini-map in the corner.

'There are three ways to the docking decks. I've checked them with my armour radar. It detected the least enemy presence in the lowest corridors. Volentia, keep behind my back and get ready to use your weapon. Take care of Sister until she feels better.'

He knocked out the hatch cover, and we jumped out to a poorly lit stairway leading to the stinky maw of the barge.


	6. V

The lower we were descending, the stronger was the stench from the downmost passages. Rotting flesh and musky odour of predators. There must be reasons why cultists avoided the place.

'Angel, Imudon complained about genestealers roaming around.'

'I'll rip them to pieces. There aren't many down there right now.'

'Fresh untainted flesh will attract throngs of them to the docks.'

Sister felt the smell and stopped, her body shaking from shoulders to feet. When I pulled her by the hand, she made a few mindless steps down the stairs, bumping into the walls. Angel who was waiting for us on the platform next to the door, picked her up and helped her to lean against a column.

'We can have a minute of respite here.'

'Look, even the door had been crushed and gnawed by the mutants.' I frowned at the stains of blood and slime covering the rusted metal.

I handed the Eviscerator to Sister, and she grasped the hilt not looking down at the weapon. Her blank unblinking stare could remain like that for days if not weeks, even though she had probably volunteered to go with Angel to avenge her novices slain by the Black Legion. When we headed to the doorway, she trudged after us dragging her chainsword with both hands.

Lamps in the reeking corridor had been broken, so Angel lit the emergency flashlight on his helmet to show us the way. I stumbled on something soft but winced at a bout of sickness when I looked under my feet. A torn, bloated human leg with teeth marks. As we were going deeper, more decomposing body parts and already picked bones lay on the gory floor. Here and there I saw clubs and iron rods bent and snapped with horrifying strength.

'We cannot avoid this fight.' Angel stopped and drew his bolter. 'Two of them right ahead. I'll run forward to intercept them. Please calm Sister.'

My mind felt the twisted presence of approaching mutants. Angel darted forward as a scarlet shadow, and I stepped back pushing Sister to the wall.

'Brace up, enemies here.'

'They've killed all of us,' she replied staring into the dark.

I lifted my own chainsword but staggered at a burst of pain in my wounded shoulder. Flashes of bolter shots let me catch glimpses of the violent clash in the end of the tunnel. Purplish chitinous monsters reached for Angel with their sinewy limbs, dodging his rounds and power blades with a speed little slower than his. Blood gushed from torn wounds where he'd managed to hit them but the genestealers went on clawing on his armour.

One of the genestealers tumbled down to the floor at Angel's kick, already weakened by numerous wounds. But the other attacked the marine from behind, two of his upper limbs twisting Angel's arm that held the bolter. Two more arms grabbed his neck and visor while the first mutant sneaked between Angel's legs and crawled towards us with a hungry yowl. To the smell of my blood.

Sister was standing at the wall, as impassive as before. I shook her and prodded her soul again. Her Eviscerator was too heavy for my injured arm so I grabbed my own weapon with both hands. The crawling genestealer's leg had been broken by the kick, two of his arms had been ripped off by bolter hits, but it was still deadly against us barely armoured. When the clawed hand lashed out at my neck, I jumped back and parried. The claws slipped down the carapace. My chainsword left a deep cut on the genestealer's shoulder but its other remaining hand grabbed my wounded hand and slammed me into the wall. I clenched my fingers to keep my hold on the hilt. The genestealer thrashed my wrist against the wall again and again, until the weapon didn't fall to the floor. A drooling maw leaned over me, the mutant's tongue licked the running blood, and it hissed with anger. Kicking and writhing in its grip, I cried out to Sister:

'Do something at last!'

'We're all dead.' She didn't seem to notice the clash.

'You maybe yes. But I'm not!' The genestealer tore off my carapace with a single move.

I kept on punching the arm that pinned me to the wall but doubled over at a vicious blow to my ribs. Breathless, I sent Sister a desperate psychic yell.

'I'll die too if you don't help me! I'll die like them!'

She turned her head at the sharp outburst and pressed her hand to her temple. The last I saw before the genestealer threw me to the floor. But it stopped at the sound of the activated Eviscerator. Sister's sob turned into a crazed battlecry. She swung her cumbersome weapon with astonishing prowess. Too long to let the mutant come closer, the blessed chainsword hacked off two remaining clawed hands with a single strike. Sister attacked without stopping until another well-landed blow split the genestealer's head in two. She dropped the Eviscerator and helped me to get up.

'Forgive me. I've failed you. I've let myself get lost in the past. When I saw him. But it was the Apothecarion...'

'Enough. Look, Angel is coming back.'

He stopped halfway to us and raised his fist. Musky mutant blood covered his scarlet armour, dripped from his power claw. A likeness of a berserker beast, not the poster boys with wings.

'The World Eaters would be green with envy, brother.' I bumped my fist against his when we walked up to him.

'A decent enemy!' He pointed with unexpected zeal at the pile of ravaged gory flesh that had been the second genestealer. 'Fury almost equal to mine. My wrath and power are waxing like fire that devours all. Black Rage, Red Thirst, I don't care.'

'Cool down, right now.' Sudden anxiety struck me as I recalled his hungry madness when the vile spirit of the Casbah touched him.

'Volentia, your shoulder had swollen so.' Sister was examining my wound.

'Let's get aboard as quickly as possible. Angel, it will be up to you. We've to assault any officer of his crew and take them hostage.'

'No need to. Fluffster has probably got control over the ship systems.'

'For another purpose. To lure the heretic back.'

Angel hacked at the exit lock with Sister's chainsword. Sparks scattered over the floor, security screens went out, the door slid aside. We were in the shaded side area of the docking decks. Central sections were taken by the Company's battleships so mortal captains had to park their vessels in poorly administered, decrepit side docks. Trying to avoid newly arrived ships with crowds of crew members fussing around, we moved from column to column towards DM's stack. Dead eyes of broken auspexes gazed at the trashed deck impassively. The Legion didn't give a damn about mortal servants as long as they didn't approach their own quarters.

'Transmission from Fluffster,' said Angel. 'Problems on board. The ship is sustained by heretical technologies. A bound daemon in the place of a Machine Spirit. His officers are all psykers.'

'Don't look like that at me. I'm out. The last attempt at daemonancy forced us to bow down to the Iron Team,' I snapped back.

'Let's take another ship then.'

'Screw that. Time for our initial plan. Tell Fluffster to send an emergency signal to the crew aboard the barge, if possible. If not, just break something in the system so the daemon reacts.'

'They've already captured a sailor. He said DM's first mate is to return in a quarter of an hour.'

I hid behind a column with Sister and ordered Angel to wait for the man at a large bunch of wires at the entrance. The first mate's strong psychic abilities were a matter of concern at least but I decided to bet on our numbers and Sister's blessed blade. His aura was visible from distance, a bright torch among lots of dim sparks. I closed my eyes repeating litanies taught by Acrolux to conceal my own presence.

A short man in flashy garbs almost fell out of an opened door over the stairway to the living quarters. He rocked like a tree in a storm, muttering drunken shanties. Three steps left till firm ground, he tripped on his own boot and tumbled over. When he tried to sit up, Angel was already holding the bolter to his tattooed head. I came closer and crossed my arms.

'One slightest witch-trick, and the red fellow will blow up your booze-soaked brains. I have a beef with your captain.'

I felt terror overtake his slowly sobering mind.

'What the... What can I do for you, m'lady, by the grace of the gods?'

Angel pressed the bolter to the first mate's forehead. Faint smoke belched from the wires set on fire.

'Don't scare him too much, brother, lest he incinerates us with another bout of fear. You, wimpy slick, lead us inside without a single word to your crew. You'll do what I order if you want to live.'

'I don't know where he stores his riches, m'lady.'

'He owes me a blood debt. If he kicks the bucket, the ship will be yours. Got the hint?'

He let us in without questions. We headed to the bridge through trashed corridors, trying not to fall down through gapes in the rusty floor. The sailors were nowhere around. I took a vox bead from Angel.

'Fluffster, we've got here. Wait for us at the control panels. Where's the remaining crew?'

'Nice to hear you back, Volentia. Uncle has them locked in the mess-room. Nothing to threaten you here.'

The bridge was in an even more pathetic state than the ship interiors. Holes in the broken oculus had been patched up with mismatched pieces of plasteel. Out of ten screens only two were working, one shattered in the corner and blinking.

'How's this piece of rubbish flying at all?' I tapped on the rusty small dome that used contain the Machine Spirit.

'Because of the warp horror Cap has sealed here.' The first mate recoiled when I touched the seals. 'He's bound our souls to the ship's new engine. Once any of us die, they're dumped into the hatch on the dome.'

'Listen well now, drunkard. You unblock the system for my Magos and send a distress call to your Cap. Tell him, the Inquisitor has fled her cell and taken you hostage. That's why you're already here.'

'You're...' He gasped and flopped to the floor.

'Not your shitty business. Do what I say if you want to get free.'

I gave a few brief orders to Uncle and Fluffster and leaned back against the wall with a relaxed look. The first mate's pistol in my hand, I aimed at the trembling cultist sailor's head when I heard brisk familiar steps in the corridors. High and even cockier than before, Blackred DM stopped in the doorway with his cursed pistol drawn. My own rosette lay on his shoulder along with the others.

'What a dumb bitch you are. How your Ordo ever allows in people as stupid as you?'

'Wanna me finish him with his own gun?'

'Too dumb, I said.' He showed me his middle finger. 'You've captured this worthless coward to scare my bunch of misfits. But you couldn't have guessed I don't give a damn about any of this scum.'

He pulled the trigger. The first mate reeled backward and fell to his knees, blood running from an open wound in his throat.

'Look, I did the job for you. And now you're alone in my own domain. Don't try to shoot, you can't ever be as quick as me. Especially after I drilled a hole in your shoulder.'

He raised his other hand with a crimson glowing crystal.

'Prepare for takeoff, Black Rat, by the will of the Changer of Ways that you cannot disobey. Have you heard that, bitch? We'll go straight to Pholiotina now. I'll pick the others on the way back. Black sails at midnight, they call pirates on my homeworld. The midnight of your Imperium is about to peal.'

I stared down the barrel of his gun, waiting for him to come closer.

'Afraid now? Well, it's time. I won't even kill you. I'll shoot at your hand that holds the gun first. Two more shots for your knees so you couldn't run away. You're a witch so I'll add you to the soul tithe and get a good reward. But I'm a noble man. I'll give you one chance.'

The engines roared. He made a few steps closer with a triumphant smirk.

'Who'll shoot quicker now? Give it a try!'

He stood in a pompous pose of a badly crafted statue from a central square on a backwater world. I closed my eye as if aiming at him. A short click, and the self-admiring heretic fell on his back with a neat opening in his chest. The hat rolled aside, rosette tinkling against the floor.

'Too much blabbering.' Uncle lowered his gun and hurried to the navigation platform stairway.

'Who's dumb then?' I looked into the heretic's wide-open eyes.

'You still. You'll learn why soon,' he wheezed out, and the crystal in his hand cracked. Red smoke left the vial and melted in the air.

I picked up his hat and tore the bunch of rosettes off the band. The precious Necron relic was there, fixed in a thin wire net. I put it into a hidden pocket under the carapace, next to the last shard. One day I'll return it to the owner. Or maybe not.

'Fluffster, send a message to Aphael, and let's leave the system. I doubt they'll agree to descend on Pholiotina.'

'Let's give it a try. Dammit.'

'What's up there?' You'll learn why, DM had said.

'The course cannot be altered after we'd embarked. His other psykers are on the Macan Kumbang. The Panther's men will intercept us before the Blood Angels arrive.'

'You know I'm a psyker as well.'

'You'll die or get possessed. Don't even approach the dome.'

'Fate itself leads us there then.'

'Lassie, but we're not alone here. You know what he meant by soul-tithe,' said Uncle.

'Bring any of the cultists here so they open the slave holds. Fluffster, how many shuttles do we have? Can they be launched manually?'

'Enough for a hundred people. Even less, if we count Angel.'

Uncle returned to the bridge with a fettered cultist in a feather cloak. His left leg ended with a blue bird foot, and he had an enamel prosthetic beak instead of a nose.

'Hey, chickadee,' I said. 'Your master is dead, that means I'm the highest authority now. You may leave through the airlock if you disagree.'

He was staring at the rosettes I was still holding.

'Trophies I won in combat when I defeated your incomparable gunslinger. Take me to the captives.'

Lower holds were located at the unlit, dirty bottom of the vessel. It had no working elevators, so I had to follow the mutant sailor down long collapsing stairways with missing steps. Angel and Uncle brought the rear with their guns at ready. The mutant stopped before a heavy corroded door and typed in a security code on the lock panel. When the door slid up, I stepped into the dark chamber, holding the lamp over my head.

The small cellar was packed with worn, battered people. Random civilians, young and old, guardsmen in ragged uniforms. Some were holding babies and toddlers, many were wounded. They covered their eyes at the light. A few threw themselves face down, shaking in fear.

'I'm Inquisitor Volentia of Ordo Hereticus, Imperial citizens. The owner of this heretical vessel has been executed to stand up to the Emperor's judgment.'

'We're free, merciful Emperor. Free,' a few voices whispered from the corners.

'How many are you here?'

'Two hundred and ten, ma'am,' said a guardsman with lieutenant insignia. 'The remains of the 87th Regiment of Abilene Scouts. We got bombed by the enemy barge during the evacuation from Hive Secundus. Our captain led the survivors to a shelter in the desert but a superior enemy force rounded us up on the way. They slaughtered the weak and dragged the rest to the ship.'

'The Imperium has sent me to the rescue, but good news end here. We have places in the shuttles for half of you only. Take my order with due obedience. Families with children, the elderly and the wounded will leave the ship, the rest will have to stay on board.'

'That'a how the Imperium cares for us, ma'am.' The lieutenant jumped up to his feet. 'You'll skedaddle to leave us to get eaten. Do you know what the soul-tithe is? The heretic who locked us here told us. Living people are fed to the horrible ship the traitors have on Pholiotina.'

Other soldiers followed his example. They stamped their feet, shouted prayers and cusses, pushed one another to get closer to the exit. Uncle and Angel took aim at the crowd, their fingers already on the triggers.

'I'm not going to skedaddle, Lieutenant.' I stared him in the eyes. 'I'm staying here with you. The refugees will take my own shuttle along with the others.'

'Lassie, you're too young to die,' Uncle whispered. 'Leave me and the rodent, we're both old men. No need to risk your life.'

'Lead the refugees to the shuttle bay.' I shook his hand.

The lieutenant looked at my face for a few seconds. Then he turned to the waiting captives.

'Civilians, injured, line up. Ten adults for each shuttle.'

'Soldiers of the Emperor, we gave an oath to fight for Him and die for Him,' I said. 'Let us meet our death standing and armed.'

'Give us weapons to meet the traitors with gunfire,' said one of the soldiers.

'The arsenals are yours.'

When all refugees headed to the shuttles, I walked around the hold. A few small vents under the ceiling caught my attention.

'Your master intended to poison the captives with gas?' I shoved the shaking cultist in the side.

'Just sedative drugs, m'lady, before disembarking. So they don't panic and scatter when the enginseers herd them to the warp ship.'

'Angel, take all cultists present on board and lock them inside.'

I got back to the bridge and stood before the screens looking at twelve bright dots moving towards the barge of the Blood Angels. Our dear owl home had left us, probably forever. Uncle sat in the corner, his face worn and sad worse than on Medrengard.

'But why, lassie?'

'Imudon is about to overtake us. Let's try to strike our final blow. I didn't want the refugees to die with us.'

The guardsmen gathered under the navigator platform, dressed in cultist rags over their uniforms. They were armed with mixed, beat-up weapons they'd found in crew cells.

'That's your chance to survive,' I addressed them from the captain's command throne. 'When the ship is intercepted by the Warpsmith's men, they'll drive the cultists into cargo transports to be carried to the surface. Pretend to be sailors of my crew, and they'll ignore you. We'll find the way out then.'

Fluffster headed back to the panels. 'Let me check something up.'

The dimpled disk of Pholiotina was growing in the oculus screen. Warships and escort vessels swarmed around the planet like flies over a rotting apple. I took the shard out of the holder and hid it under the cuff of my coat.


	7. VI

Four border cruisers approached the ship when we reached the orbit. Fluffster tapped on the screen.

'Mechanicus vessels. Quite an old pattern. I won't be surprised if they hijacked them from Mars when the Heresy broke out.'

A pop-up window flashed in the middle. Incoming message. 'Black Rat, turn off your engines and wait on the bridge for the soul-tithe to be collected. By the grace of the gods and the will of the King.' I heard the daemon screech inside the dome. The vessel stopped abruptly. Artificial gravity systems failed, and I soared up to the filthy vault. Fluffster grabbed the platform fence with one paw, still tracing the screen tables with the other.

'Come up here, Volentia. I'm turning it back on.'

I dashed forward and hung on a railing. Pieces of rubbish rained down on the bridge denting the floor and the columns. Beeps again. 'Black Rat, allow the docking and prepare the captives for transfer.' I could only hope they didn't care how captains changed as long as they paid the tithe. Nothing in my battered garb cried Inquisition. Angel looked like a perfect rookie renegade, all emblems on his armour well-hidden under a thick layer of dried blood.

'Sister, another strict order!' The brooding Repentia raised her head to my cheerful shout. 'Crawl behind the pile of rubbish, not a sound until the heretics leave.'

Surrounded by the motley crew of masquerading guardsmen, I wrapped the feather cloak taken from the Birdfoot around my wounded shoulder and leaned on the platform rail. 'Docking successful. Ready to open the doors.'

A grotesque procession entered the bridge, led by a messy moving pile of servo-drones, tentacles and weaponry draped in meters of black cloth and encrusted with seer crystals. Mismatched mechanical legs bent and slid apart under the weight as the Heretek crawled up to the center like a sick spider. The retinue squad of Skitarii and tech-adepts was nothing like riffraff enginseers and practically crude automaton guards of Aspersum's citadel. Toy robots kids assemble from junkyard loot, masterpieces of Ork crafting skills were pale likeness of this motley band where no one resembled another. Corroded pieces of Imperial machines, Necron limbs, wraithbone decorations were mounted on their metal frames without any idea of propriety. What little remained of their natural flesh had been twisted by warp influence into bunches of tendrils or rows of eyes in random places.

The Heretek pulled the baggy hood back with a rusted mechadendrite, and I saw a painted Tyranid skull with red augmetic eyes staring at me from the sockets. I hid the desire to laugh under a broad welcoming grin.

'Hello, sir. Or ma'am. Sorry, it's all like with the Necrons so I'd like to get to know whom I'm honoured to receive on board.'

The tyranid jaws creaked open, and a husky, low voice sounded from a flickering inset dynamic.

'You stand before Magos Dominus Orthragus, Second Master of the Royal Shipyard. Where's the captain of this bucket?'

One of his legs got stuck in the dented floor at another step. He reeled aside and knocked over a gaping acolyte.

'Well, Magos, there's been a dramatic change of management recently. To put it simple, I won the ship in a gunslinger duel.'

'Don't you dare to snicker, cheeky broad.' Orthragus' vocabulary and tone cried of the Panther's corrupting influence, so I pretended to sneeze as the unravelling black comedy was already too much to keep from laughing. 'The only damn thing that matters is the tithe. Keep in mind that the previous captain's debts are also yours now.'

'The captives in the hold are yours to take away. And let's part ways with mutual satisfaction.' Sedative drugs would prevent the cultists from ruining my guise.

'Last time he brought twice less than he had promised. We agreed that if he didn't bring twice as usual on the next visit, he'd be taken as well along with the crew. How many are there?'

I turned to the screens. 'Eighty four, Magos. All he could find.'

'You're mad, stupid wench. Instead of two hundred we agreed on with Blackred DM?'

'Venerable Magos, I'm new to this wonderful place. Let's settle that matter in a friendly way. What about a special commission just for you? A priceless bit of Necron lore?' I scratched my head, still trying to smile despite the chills.

'The Warmaster will have me disassembled to scrap metal and reworked into a mobile loo if we don't provide him with the warp relic. Get your ass to our ship with every damn piece of flesh on board. At the slightest attempt of resistance my guards will disperse incapacitating agents through the ventilation system.'

Mechadendrites lashed out from under the pleats of his robe and constricted around my neck and hands. My retinue froze up where they stood. Shock on the faces of the guardsmen turned into desperate anger. The lieutenant grabbed his trophy stubber and emptied the clip into the closest Skitarius with a frantic yell.

'Screw you, heretical cocksucker! We'll die for the Emperor and for you, Lady Inquisitor!'

Two fake Necron arms fell to the floor but a single hit from a stun gun mounted on one of the Skitarius' servo-limbs made the lieutenant double over and drop his weapon. Magos Orthragus shook me so that my teeth chattered.

'That's how you've got your hands on the vessel, corpse-worshipping bitch. That's whom the King's men are looking for on the Macan Kumbang.' He slapped an oxygen mask on me and waved at his men. 'Spray gas right now and drag the rest to our holds.'

Angel fought against three Skitarii with beastly ferocity until they pinned him down and turned off his armour. Light green mist spread over the bridge. While he lay on the floor hardly able to move his arms and legs in the grip of his jammed suit, the motley tech-adepts herded the haywired guardsmen and drugged cultists in groups to the exit.

'It's a shame you rescued these dungheads, isn't it?' Orthragus pulled me closer to his skeletal tyranid mug. 'No cultist robes can hide the stupidity of the False Emperor's soldiers. They're lucky not to feel the inevitable death until it's too late. As for you, Lord Warpsmith might decide to interrogate you first.'

'Has anyone told you it's even more stupid to look like an escaped science museum exhibit?'

'This creature is a symbol of the most sublime machine perfection flesh can ever reach.'

'Cussing fits you better than preaching, man. These pompous phrases remind me of my buddy I almost ran into a few hours ago.'

'Stop mumbling. Save your words for Lord Warpsmith.'

He released me only in the oil-reeking cargo transport where my friends and captives sat and lay side by side on the floor. I shoved the lieutenant on the shoulder.

'No wonder you haven't died from a headshot yet. You didn't seem to be eager to die for the Emperor when I got down to see you captives.'

His drooling face remained impassive as he didn't even listen to me. I kicked his butt and hobbled to the back corner where our captors had led my retinue away from the others. Fluffster was fully conscious, to my great surprise.

'That's how it's all turned out.' I pressed to his shaggy side and rubbed my temples. 'A bad hair day from the beginning. A hole in my shoulder and an optimistic perspective of getting eaten by that weird ship. I cannot even follow you there to do at least something.'

'Try to recall Lucia's vessel. It was forged in the same hellish workshop as the machines this system is famous for. Only one piece of advice - don't listen to the ship's voice and don't come close to its engines.'

'You didn't plan to visit the site.'

'True. But another team is in a hurry to harrow it.'

'Speaking in riddles again. Soon I'll really believe you're rooting for the Necrons.'

He turned away and closed his eyes. I shrugged my shoulders but arguing would be utterly useless in that situation. Orthragus will hand me to the Warpsmith, then I'll get back to the Panther where Imudon is waiting for me. Where my nemesis gets the shard to his black principal heart. His minions kill me on the spot so I join my friends already killed by the monstrous daemonic ship. Profit.

The transport hit the ground with ear-splitting screeching. One of the Skitarii kicked the door open.

'Line up and exit one by one.'

I went out the last of all and stopped in the end of the line. Vertigo struck me at the first breath of thin, cold air. When I looked up at the dark blue sky, everything reeled before my eyes. I pressed both hands to my throbbing heart but Fluffster grabbed me before I could fall down.

We stood on a barren plateau surrounded by tall crags towering over us in the condensing darkness. Glowing warp spheres floated around, but their unnatural light of cold hues barely let us see anything past the gathered band of our captors. I tried to use my psychic senses, and they suddenly resonated with the sulky aura of the place. My glance slipped past the tech-adepts and their grotesque machinery swarmed with throngs of cultists, past the crags to the creepy power center hidden in the murk. Dazzling crimson flame. Brimstone stench of the nightmarish shrine.

I opened my eyes at a harsh nudge to my side. Orthragus coiled his mechadendrite around my neck and dragged me out of the line. A distorted shape approached us, hovering over the ground, followed by a squad of black-clad legionnaires and Skitarii even more twisted than our captors. More machine than man, the stranger had a Black Legion breastplate on but the rest of his body was tainted metal and wraithbone. A carved mask with complex eye implants was fused to his skull, his bulky augmetic arms had been fitted with intricate crafting tools and intimidating weapons. Both of his legs had been cut off, the stumps fixed on the seat of his anti-gravity throne that was a mobile workshop by itself.

'May the gods bless you, Lord Warpsmith.' Orthragus bowed his spider knees before his master. 'Soul-tithe from the Black Rat ready for feeding the Evernight. I am delighted to present you the Inquisitor who escaped from His Majesty's cells.'

'Drive her in along with the others,' the Warpsmith said with contempt. 'I don't need any of her pathetic kind.'

The legionnaires took us at gunpoint. Orthragus retracted his servo-limb and bowed his tyranid head with mock courtesy.

'You're lucky to have been spared from bleak days of captivity, bitch. But that would have been a resort compared to what will happen to your tiny soul.'

I ignored his jeers. Time to think about the Emperor's mercy. If only the pious tales of afterlife were true. Raaf had never believed that, and most of the traitors said all souls perish in the warp, devoured and ravaged by the hungry Neverborn. Unwanted thoughts that hadn't pestered me before, even in the shrine. Fatigue, aftermath of the heartbreaking vision. Shadow of an ancient death lingering around. Still searing my psychic sight. Last death throes of the Great Angel, helpless before his traitorous brother. Pain in the chest. A distant call I could hardly resist.

The suppressing aura touched my soul even before I passed between the cliffs to see the Evernight. Unholy masterpiece of no human craft, the ship rested on the bedrock like a mountain of deepest black, the whole length of the barge lost to sight in the giant canyon. Crimson veins flickered on the surface, forming patterns of ever-shifting runes. Horrible sigils familiar from the visit to Imudon's daemon world. The original that Lucia's ship had copied. It was silent and devoid of life but its heart-reactor was slowly waking inside at the new portion of soul-fuel to be consumed. Ten thousand cultists and slaves had been fed to Lucia's ship to let it take wing. This dreadful barge would need millions.

The Warpsmith soared up to touch the black wall, and a fiery portal opened before the line of hazed captives. Held at gunpoint by traitor marines and Skitarii, they paced inside like cattle herded to the slaughterhouse. I cried out the Death Incantation aloud and marched in with my head up. All outside sounds vanished when the portal closed. We were locked in the pitch-dark maw of the Evernight.

I covered my face, choking at the reek of brimstone. Neither physical nor psychic senses were of help in this piece of unreality summoned to our world from the depths of past that predated the human race. The call again. Other captives scurried around, ready to follow the daemonic voice. Fluffster's paw touched my hand.

'Memory of the War in Heaven coming alive. I wish that had never happened but the time is nigh.'

'They're moving somewhere.'

'To their doom.'

'Stop, you bloody fools!' I shouted. No one answered.

My flashlight didn't work. I ran forward trying not to lose my mind to the call. A murmuring voice rustled inside my head. 'Do not fear. You have got the mark. It can even become yours if you take the ultimate vow. You are stronger than the slave who betrayed me.' Imudon? Not, his even creepier sidekick. I clenched my teeth pushing my way through the crowd. A thin crimson ray traced a twisting line ahead to the maze of corridors.

Reddish unlight came oozing from the black walls, and a gust of piercing cold hit me. Psychic frost was growing over my coat and carapace, a clear spot left on the sleeve over the hidden dagger. I pulled the shard and squeezed it in my numbing fist. A few turns left till the reactor chamber.

The last passage ended, and the captives froze before the colossal vault lit by the cold glare of the Evernight's heart that hovered above the floor. A pulsing crimson crystal the size of a small ship itself, it contained the inhuman sentience that animated the barge. The call had got so strong it suppressed almost all other thoughts and feelings.

The beaked cultist was the first to came out of the enchanted stupor. With an enraptured yowl he dashed forward, both arms reaching for the heart. Once he touched the shifting surface, his body dissolved into ashes that scattered over the crystal. Everyone shivered at the last scream of his soul swallowed by the vessel. Cultists followed him with blind eagerness, unable to resist the summoning. The guardsmen were coming back to their senses, some muttering prayers but most turned towards the heart, hypnotized just alike.

'Not a step forward, you bastards!' I picked up what had left of the Will for this order. 'Not a single step.'

I looked at the null-shard in my hands. The only remaining chance to get rid of my nemesis. Of no use as one of the gruesome-twosome would still live on anyway, to torment me even after. But now it could release us from the horrendous barge that would consume even the strongest when our resistance would have been weakened by the unceasing call. Step by step I approached the heart. Its deadly cold hardly let me move. The mark would allow me to get near without succumbing to its will.

'For the Emperor, greetings from the Holy Inquisition and the old queen!' I stabbed the heart with all remaining strength.

The shard left its frame, and I tumbled over at the null shock. The whole barge spasmed with pain. When I opened my eyes, the vault was absolutely dark. The cold aura had been reduced to almost nothing, tiny sparks lighting and dying on the cracked surface of the extinguished crystal.

'Hurry up!' I heard Fluffster's voice. 'The heart is stunned but not dead. Volentia, turn on the flashlight while laws of physics still work here. Follow the passages to the outer walls.'

'Angel can make holes to get out when you check up his armour,' I said recuperating after the strike. 'The ours will be easy to hide among countless cultists.'

'We'll let them out in groups.'

'I doubted His Providence when we entered the barge. But only dedication to Him prevented the soldiers from running after the cultists.'

We moved along the blank outer wall, a group leaving the hull after every hundred metres. When only the last group of guardsmen remained inside, I sensed the presence of other humans inside. They had found out what had happened. Unlike the disguised soldiers, we had little chance to hide or escape.

I took Fluffster by the paw. 'Leave me here. Tell the Conclave I died on duty and all other bullshit people say reporting about the death of operatives nobody cares about. The enemies might let you away if they catch me.'

'We'll follow you anywhere as you were ready to get to hell itself to rescue us. Is it true?' Fluffster looked at my retinue.

They gathered around me when the last group left. Holes vanished quicker and quicker as the ship was slowly recovering. We ran another hundred metres, and Angel started mauling the wall again. All he could do was to break small apertures that closed the second he withdrew the claws. Search parties were approaching from every direction. Sister folded her hands in the sacred sign.

'A noble decision that will screw us,' Uncle said.

'We're too easy to find anyway,' I answered. 'But we'd just be executed before Imudon finds us.'

'Sad to tell you all, but it seems our friends I relied on are late today.' Fluffster bowed his head.

Five legionnaires walked out of the closest passage. Three more were aiming at us from the other corridor. Not the Black Legion. Crimson and steel of the Word Bearers.

They dragged us out to the cold air of the sunless world. First whom I saw at the ship wall was my old nemesis talking to the Warpsmith, battered but still majestic like on the last time we'd met.

'I could just give her out to the Mistress of the Arsenal or the Master of the Fleet,' grunted the Warpsmith. 'The Warmaster punishes without mercy those who fail to do his bidding.'

'My First Acolyte will help you with the repairs if you hand her and her retinue out to me. Moreover, both lords you've mentioned left the Warmaster's disposition recently.'

'I've heard about the work of wonder you used for your messenger. A crying shame that the grey bastards blew it up before I could see it.'

On seeing me Imudon nodded at the Warpsmith and made a sign to his men. The Word Bearer who was dragging me pushed me to his master and threw me to my knees before the Dark Apostle. Imudon leaned over and put his gauntlet over my head.

'Here you are, to embrace your destiny or get lost forever.'

I looked up at his stern face.

'You're still unbearably pompous, your worshipfulness.'

'When will he arrive then?' asked the Warpsmith who was studying the ship walls.

'The moment I reach my barge.'

'Take them now lest I change my mind.'

Imudon lifted me and put me on his shoulder. My numb hands hurt at the heat of his backpack torches. His men thudded behind, nudging my friends away from the dreadful barge.

'So to the shrine, old man?' I tapped on his armour.

'Not right now. To my own quarters. We'll have time to discuss your future.'

Two Thunderhawks in the colours of the Seventeenth stood waiting on a clifftop landing strip. Five marines headed to one, three followed Imudon to the other with my crew. He left them in the troop compartment and passed right to the pilot cabin. The engines started at his touch, and I saw the route traced on the screen map in advance. He seated me next to him and started checking augur data.

'So that any potential enemy thinks you've taken half a company with you,' I said watching two small dots move away from the surface.

'And they won't be sure which one is mine. We'll part in a minute and reach the barge from two sides.'

'You didn't seem very smart but you've outsmarted even Fluffster.'

'If I was dumb, I wouldn't have survived the Long War.'

I sat back, adrenaline intoxication wearing off, pain in the injured shoulder growing stronger in seconds, so swollen the coat sleeve squeezed it like vice. All I wanted by then was to close my eyes and forget about the mishaps of the day, the sorrowful images of past even my distant ancestors hadn't witnessed. When the gunship left the scanty atmosphere of Pholiotina, Imudon reached for his belt pouch and took out a medicine package.

'Let's patch you up. Don't move, I'll take off your breastplate and coat myself.' He half-smiled on seeing the Necron cube but said nothing.

A quarter of an hour later, with my bandaged shoulder blissfully numb, I rubbed my eyes in vain efforts to keep them open.

'At least one advantage. I won't be pestered by your nightmares anymore. Sick of seeing that featureless mug with glowing eyes.'

He frowned and shook his head. 'But that wasn't me. There's another dangerous fellow who likes to mimic the shadows he commands in my name.'

'He's trickier than you.'

'Looks like you lied to me in the nave when you told me he hadn't offered you anything.'

'I don't feel like returning to that creepy day. I've got enough stuff to rid me of healthy sleep recently.' My heart throbbed like mad when the image of sprawling angelic wings popped up in my drowsy mind. 'Your worshipfulness, better tell me, were you present on the Vengeful Spirit on that very day?'

'I was.' Imudon pursed his lips as if unwilling to give something out. 'He stumbled upon me when He boarded the barge to bring down His rebellious son. What could a single marine do against the Master of Mankind in His full glory? Even before I could swing my weapon, He threw me out to the void with a slight move of His hand.'

'You are still living while heroes are dead.'

'By your age you should have learned that life is unfair. Take a nap until we're there. Nothing bad happens to your friends if you behave wisely.'

I closed my eyes, everything around getting lost as I slipped into the dreams. But a brisk jolt shook me so I bit my tongue. Lights turned off and emergency signals beeped as the next one hit the cabin.

'Holy shit.' Imudon pounded the control panel. 'You were wrong. The old fellow is still smarter than me.'

A whole armada of ships appeared from nowhere right between our gunship and the barge anchored beyond the system borders. Large battleship with four escorts but not a space marine vessel.

'That's a Black Ship. Deadly for our little bucket.'

Air swished out from the cabin through a small hole over the front screen. The mechanical impassive voice kept on repeating the same grim warnings. 'Left engine damaged. Cannot maintain speed. Air leakage in the cabin.'

Imudon put on the helmet and gave me a shove. 'Pick up your things and run to the compartment. Less chance you'll have your head ripped off by the next hit.'

My friends were sitting in the corner, staring down the barrels of the marines' bolters. The legionnaires turned their heads from screen to screen, clenching their fists at every hit. The Black Ship was now side to side with the gunship slowing down. 'Right engine damaged.'

The gunship shivered and stopped. 'Gravity systems will be turned off in three minutes. Excessive damage to the energy systems.' The marines rushed to the back compartment without a word. We stayed alone, looking at the circle of our ship stuck in the void. 'Grappling detected.' Four dots left the circle, carried away from the ship. I felt the gunship move again.

'He decided to evade. Wise.' Fluffster smiled. 'Our adventure is over by now. We'll see whether we can retrieve our armaments from the Black Rat, but only when we're aboard the Quiet Vigil.'

The ship stopped. Lights turned on again, powered by the Black Ship's inner systems. The doors opened, and I pressed both hands to my mouth not to throw up at the presence of strong nulls in combat readiness. Three Silent Sisters entered the compartment, led by Judge Pyralis Ceropsina in the intimidating red garbs of her rank.

'Had to do the job by ourselves while waiting for you, dear Sister.' Fluffster shook hands with her. 'Let's grab DM's ship if it's still in orbit before the Macan Kumbang notices us. I bet he's left something curious behind in the cogitators.'

I fell asleep once the door of my psy-shielded cell locked behind my back. In the calm of the ship my nightmares ceded at last while the warp tides were carrying us back home.


	8. Epilogue

Epilogue

For more than a hundred centuries had Craftworld Altansar been drifting through the defiled space of the Womb of Destruction, past the forgotten ruins that had once been proud worlds of the Fallen Empire. The Weeping Seer was no living witness to the dreadful night that had shattered his race's reign over the stars but he felt the echo of countless deaths that still lingered around the deformed planets. Most of his brethren inside the damned craftworld had to give up their mind-skills so that the Great Enemy's proximity couldn't drive them to madness and oblivion.

He left his crystal pavilion to meet the guests, clad in golden armour forged by the Ancients aeons ago to ward off the malign aura of the cursed place. Prophecies that had scared him in the times of his apprenticeship were coming to life. Two strangers stood before him, a skull-helmed warrior in black Phoenix armour and a Farseer leaning on a staff of tremendous might.

'The times of Rhana Dandra are truly close if Lord Maugan Ra is back to his people.'

'The accursed warhosts are leaving the Womb to assault the border fortress of the Mon-keigh.' Maugan Ra's voice was a sinister whisper. 'We are to sneak past them to join our people in their last stand.'

'In their strife to return the past glory,' said the Farseer. 'I am Eldrad Ulthran of Ulthwe, survivor of the Fall. I have come to speak to your captive.'

'He has gone dangerous. I am going to have him incinerated and his soul banished before the haze that obscures the tangles of his thread swallows us.' The memories of the captive's unwilling revelations were cheerless to recall.

'Try to look past the vile enchantment of She-Who-Thirsts. His thread is not to be cut now. I will take him away after the talk.'

'We are few but ready to go to war.' Eitleog Nightfall joined them, accompanied by the warriors of his shrine who had come to greet the legendary paragon of their sniper art.

'Not the great battles will decide the outcome. The Seventh Path will. I believe there is no need to die to the last one to get free of the Great Enemy.'

'I've heard about the Croneswords lost on abandoned worlds but even our rangers returned empty-handed when I sent them to retrieve at least one,' said the Weeping Seer.

'The White Hawk has already set off to find the first of them. Join me on the crystal moon of Coheria to deceive the Mon-keigh forces with a small rite while the real deeds will be done beyond their vision.'

'Who is the White Hawk?' A fleeting image appeared in the Weeping Seer's psychic sight, too quick to grasp.

Instead of an answer, Eldrad Ulthran drew a rune in the air. The one even the Weeping Seer hadn't seen yet but he guessed what it meant.

'Harbinger of death.' The Whispering Seer's voice failed him.

'Flickering hope of rebirth,' Ulthran objected. 'The shining thread that binds things together. The one that will hold even your deranged captive from slipping away.'

'I have taught your fosterling to wait not hurry, Farseer,' said Maugan Ra. 'An only skill that will be of use for him now.'

 **Next episode:** **s/13121904/1/Volume-1-Episode-10-Every-Exit-Is-an-Entrance**


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